Unbroken by Micky Neilson
Pg 1: Everything that is, is alive.
The words had become a mantra in his mind, a constant reinforcement of his newfound understanding.
More importantly they were an epiphany, the key to unlocking a whole new universe of knowledge.
And the epiphany was why he was here.
Nobundo took comfort in the words as he slowly negotiated Zangarmarsh’s forest of colossal
mushrooms, their spores glowing green and red in the early morning mist.
He traversed the creaky wooden bridges that stretched over the shallow marshland waters.
In just a few moments he found himself at his destination, gazing up at the radiant
underbelly of a mushroom that dwarfed all others.
There atop its cap, the draenei settlement of Telredor awaited him.
He progressed with trepidation, leaning heavily on his walking stick and cursing the pain
in his joints as he stepped onto the platform that would carry him to the top.
He was worried, for he was still unsure how the others would react.
There had been a time when his kind had not even been allowed to enter the settlements
of the unaffected.
They are just going to laugh at me.
He took a deep breath of the cool, misty marsh air and asked it to give him courage for the
challenge to come.
Once the platform came to a stop, Nobundo carefully shuffled through the arched entryway,
down several shallow steps, and out onto the landing overlooking the settlement’s small
plaza, where the assembly had already gathered.
He gazed down at the hard-set faces of the various draenei, whose disdainful, superior
eyes stared up at him.
He was, after all, Krokul: “Broken".
To be Broken was to be outcast and vilified.
It was not right or just, but it was the reality he had been forced to accept.
Many of his unaffected brothers and sisters could not understand how the decline of the
Krokul could have occurred, and especially, as in Nobundo’s case, how one who had been
so gifted and so favored by the Light could have fallen so far.
Though Nobundo himself did not know exactly how it happened, he did know when.
He recollected with startling clarity the exact moment that marked the beginning of
his own personal descent.
Pg 2: The skies wept when the orcs laid siege to Shattrath City.
It had been many long months since rain had graced the lands of Draenor, but now, almost
as if in protest of the looming battle, dark clouds roiled overhead.
Light showers drizzled over the city and the army outside its walls, increasing to a steady
downpour as the two sides watched and waited.
There must be a thousand of them, Nobundo speculated grimly from his perch high atop
the inner ramparts.
Beyond the outer walls shadows moved among the torch-lit trees of Terokkar Forest.
Perhaps if the orcs had taken the time to plan more carefully, they would have deforested
the region outside in preparation for their attack, but these days the orcs cared little
for strategy.
For them there was only the thrill of battle and the immediate gratification of bloodshed.
Telmor had fallen, as had Karabor and Farahlon.
So many of the draenei’s once-majestic cities now lay in ruins.
Shattrath was all that was left.
Slowly the orc assemblage maneuvered into position, making Nobundo think of a great
fanged serpent coiling itself in preparation to strike… a strike that would surely spell
the end of Shattrath’s defenders.
Not that we are meant to survive anyway.
He knew full well that he and the others who had gathered here tonight were meant to be
a sacrifice.
They had volunteered to remain behind and fight this last battle.
Their inevitable defeat would appease the orcs such that they would consider the draenei
decimated and all but extinct.
Those who had sought refuge elsewhere would survive to fight another day, a day when the
scales would be more balanced.
So be it then.
My spirit will live on, becoming one with the glory that is the Light.
Emboldened, Nobundo stood to his full height, his strong and athletic frame bracing for
the events to come.
His thick tail shifted anxiously as he settled his weight evenly between both leonine legs
and ground the toes of his hooves into the solid stone masonry.
He took a deep breath, tightening his hands around the shaft of his Light-blessed crystalline
hammer.
But I will not go quietly.
He and the other Vindicators, holy warriors of the Light, would fight to the very last.
He glanced to either side at his brethren stationed at intervals along the wall walk.
Like him, they stood impassive and resolute, having reached their own peace with the destiny
that now awaited them.
Outside, the war machines had arrived: catapults, rams, ballistae--siege engines of every description
passing briefly through the torchlight.
Their heavy apparatuses creaked and groaned ominously as they were positioned within striking
distance of the walls.
Drumbeats sounded, sporadic at first, then quickly joined by more and more until the
entire forest was alive with a rhythm that started soft like the rain, then grew to a
persistent, thundering roll.
Nobundo whispered a prayer, asking the Light to give him strength.
There was a deep rumbling and movement in the murky clouds overhead that echoed the
frantic drumbeats below.
For a second Nobundo wondered if perhaps the Light meant to answer his prayer with a display
of power and fury beyond any he could hope to summon, a great beam of holy fire that
would eradicate the entire savage, bloodthirsty army in one magnificent sweep.
A display indeed followed, but not of the holy powers of the Light.
The clouds thundered, swirled, and erupted, punched through by massive flaming projectiles
that hurtled to the earth with meteoric speed and bone-jarring strength.
A deafening roar assaulted Nobundo’s ears as one of the objects passed perilously close,
obliterating a nearby buttress and pelting him with flying debris.
As if awaiting this signal, the multitudes outside pressed forward, their bloodcurdling
war-cries rolling over the city as they mobilized with singular purpose: to destroy all within
their path.
The rain’s intensity increased as the outermost walls shuddered from the strikes of massive
stones slung by the crude catapults.
Nobundo knew the outer walls would not hold.
They had been constructed rather hastily: the wall sections extending above the depressed
floor of the outer ring were an addition made in the last year, a defense made necessary
by the orcs’ methodical extermination of his people and the subsequent realization
that this city would be their final bastion.
Several brutish ogres went to work on penetrating a section of wall already compromised from
the meteor assault.
Two more of the massive beasts swung a gargantuan battering ram against the city’s main gates.
Nobundo’s brethren cast several attacks against the enemy, but wherever the draenei
struck one attacker down, two more would take his place.
The damaged wall section had begun to crumble completely.
A flood of crazed orcs clamored on the opposite side, climbing over top of one another in
a frenzy of bloodlust.
The time had come.
Nobundo raised his hammer to the sky, closed his eyes, and cleared his mind of the overwhelming
cacophony of battle.
His mind called out, and his body felt the familiar warmth of the Light wash over him.
The hammer glowed.
He focused his intentions and directed the blessed, purging holy powers into the ogres
below.
There was a blinding flash that briefly illuminated the entire battle scene, accompanied by a
startled bellowing from the front line of orcs as the Holy Light seared through them,
stunning them into silence and halting them long enough for several draenei warriors to
focus on bringing down one of the giant ogres.
Nobundo’s momentary relief was crushed by the sound of splintering wood: the final successful
thrust of the battering ram against the main gates.
Nobundo watched as the Lower City defenders raced to meet the incoming tide of orcs and
ogres and were immediately cut down.
Nobundo called upon the Light again, directing his healing powers to whomever he could, but
the opposition was simply too great.
As soon as he healed a wounded draenei, that same warrior endured repeated, brutal attacks
mere seconds later.
More ogres had gone to work on the weakened section of outer wall and were now succeeding
in pushing through.
The defenders, hopelessly outnumbered, were beset on either side.
The orcs were crazed, drunk on their bloodlust.
As the outer ring filled with their number, Nobundo could see their eyes: they glowed,
burned with a crimson fury that was at once mesmerizing and terrifying.
Nobundo and the other Vindicators switched tactics, from healing to purging.
Once again the city was bathed in brilliant radiance as scores of orcs were struck by
the Light, the crimson glow dimming from their eyes momentarily as they slumped forward to
be dispatched by the remaining draenei warriors.
Kra-koom!
The wall shook, and Nobundo’s hooves slid on the rain-slicked stone.
He steadied himself and looked down to see one of the ogres pummeling away at the base
of the buttress to his left with a tree trunk-sized club.
He raised his hammer to the sky and closed his eyes, but his concentration was quickly
broken by another sound….
Kra-KABOOM!
Not the ogre this time, but an explosion that originated from somewhere below but out of
sight, knocking Nobundo off balance.
He rolled to his side and glanced over the edge to see a fine red mist billowing out
into Lower City.
The few defenders who were left immediately began choking and retching.
They doubled over, many of them dropping their weapons.
The barbaric orcs made quick work of the sickened warriors, reveling in the carnage.
When the slaughter was finished, they glared upward, rabid in their desire to tear the
defenders on the wall limb from limb.
Several orcs climbed on the backs of the ogres, attempting to scale the sheer surface by hand.
Their aggression and unbridled ferocity were staggering.
The mist had spread throughout the entirety of Lower City and was now beginning to rise,
slowly obscuring the bedlam below.
Nobundo heard a commotion behind him.
Several orcs who had somehow broken through the inner circle’s defenses now stormed
onto the rise.
Kra-koom!
The wall shuddered again, and Nobundo cursed the ogre below, who had undoubtedly returned
to pummeling the buttress.
A second salvo of flaming meteors fell from the sky as Nobundo readied to meet the oncoming
crush of attackers.
He directed the fury of the Light into the first orc head-on.
The green beast’s eyes dimmed, and he crumpled.
Nobundo brought the crystal hammerhead down squarely on top of the orc’s skull, then
yanked upward and swung left, feeling a satisfying crunch as the orc’s ribs shattered.
He twisted and brought the hammer across at a downward arc into the side of another orc’s
leg, shattering its kneecap.
The beast howled in pain and fell forward off of the rampart.
The mist had worked its way onto the rise now, where it rolled out and covered the stone
like a carpet.
Nobundo and his fellow Vindicators fought on as the mist rose to chest level, then finally
to their faces, stinging their eyes and burning their lungs.
Nobundo heard the death-cries of several of his companions, but he had lost sight of them
in the dense red fog.
Mercifully the attacks on him seemed to have abated; he stumbled back a step, stifling
the urge to vomit.
It felt as if his skull was about to burst.
Then he heard a horrific battle cry from out of the mist that chilled him to the bone.
A shadow approached.
Nobundo struggled to see as his body wrenched in spasms.
He tried desperately to hold his breath as out of the dense crimson mist stepped a tattooed,
fiery-eyed terror… a massive orc covered in the distinctive blue of draenei blood,
out of breath, twisting a wicked two-handed axe in his grip.
His raven-hued hair clung to his thick chest and shoulders, and his lower jaw had been
colored as black as pitch, lending his face the countenance of a skull.
Behind him scores of orcs rushed onto the rise.
Nobundo knew that the end was near.
Kra-koom!
The wall shook once more.
The nightmarish orc charged.
Nobundo arched back.
The blade carved a gash across his chest, rending his armor and numbing his left side.
Nobundo answered with a swing of his hammer that crushed the fingers of the orc’s right
hand, rendering it and the axe he held useless.
Then, to Nobundo’s horror, the terrifying creature smiled.
The orc gripped him with his good hand, and the twin furnaces of his eyes bored into Nobundo…
bored through him.
Nobundo was forced to gasp for air.
As he did, he felt the veneer of his will being stripped away.
It was as if some manner of dark, demonic magic was at work, as if a part of his very
essence was being obliterated, and it was an assault he had no answer for.
Kra-koom!
Nobundo vomited thick blood onto the orc’s face and chest.
He closed his eyes and frantically, desperately hailed the Light, beseeching it to neutralize
the orc long enough for him to mount a defense.
He called out…
And for the first time since he had contacted the Light and been graced by its blessed radiance…
There was no answer.
Terrified, he opened his eyes and looked into the manic, fire-pit orbs of the orc, who opened
his great mouth and bellowed, drowning out all other sound and threatening to shatter
Nobundo’s eardrums.
It seemed as if he was suddenly plunged into some kind of terrible, silent dream.
The beast reared back and slammed its head into Nobundo’s face.
Nobundo reeled backward, his arms flailing, the rain pounding down, those blazing eyes
searing into his own as he fell…
down, down, down through the mist, crashing into something large that grunted as it gave
beneath him.
Still trapped in the silent nightmare, Nobundo saw the orc disappear from the edge of the
wall.
Nearby, the ruined buttress gave way, and a massive section of the upper ramparts fell,
blocking out the rain and the sky and trapping Nobundo in a world of quiet darkness.
As he lay there, he thought about the ones who had gone into hiding, those he prayed
would escape slaughter, those he loved and respected, those for whom he had given his…