Warcraft: Official Movie Novelization

“Down!” The word was half demand, half sob. Lothar looked up at the plateau, trying to find his old friend. “Take it down! Medivh! Medivh, please!”

His world narrowed, and he sprinted toward his boy only to be brought up short by the spitting, captured bolts of lightning. Furious, he tried to reach through the spaces between them, to see if there was any place he could cross. His armor sizzled as he touched it, shocking him and knocking him back, but he again rushed forward, trying to find a space, a crack in the lightning-spear wall, a place where a slender sapling of a young man, a boy with his mother’s eyes, could slip through—

It was futile. There was only the erratic, flashing wall, the straight backs of Callan and the handful of other soldiers who had been trapped, alone with the maddened green-skinned monsters who now advanced upon them.

“Medivh!”

Desperately, Lothar gritted his teeth and pushed his arm through. The lightning did not like such a violation of its power and punished him for his arrogance, turning the armor red where it touched. Lothar persevered, straining until his hand closed on his child’s shoulder. Callan turned. Their faces were only a few inches apart, but it might as well have been a thousand leagues. “Callan!” he cried, “Hold on, son!”

“Dad…!” The lightning cracked and Lothar was forced to stumble back. Callan looked at his father with that strange, old, knowing expression he had worn in the infirmary. He smiled sadly, almost sweetly. He knew. Cally had known, too, when the shadow of death had stretched across her. Even as her lungs had filled for the last time, she had used the precious breath to form words of comfort for her devastated mate. Enraged, Lothar scrabbled furiously at the soil, reaching his arm through again. He’s right here—he’s so close, I can reach him, I—

Lothar met his gaze, held it, as his wife’s eyes smiled back at him from a boy’s—a man’s—face.

“For Azeroth!” And Callan turned and charged into the approaching sea of brown and green skin.

Lothar went mad.

He flung himself at the lightning barrier, trying to break through, perhaps through sheer force of will. This time, he gritted his teeth against the jolts of energy and kept pushing. His armor sizzled, glowing orange where the white lightning shafts touched it, and he heard it snap.

He endured it as long as he could, but at last he stumbled away, nerves afire with pain, watching the huge monsters with their scraps of armor and obscenely sized weapons close in around the handful of soldiers, blotting out their bright armor.

Lothar sobbed, a harsh, racking cry that tore at his throat and his heart. His head whipped around wildly, searching for Medivh, anyone, anything, for aid, unable to help his boy, unable to abandon him.

His eyes fell on Reliant’s body—and the shield with the horned skull that had taken the horse’s life. Lothar raced toward it and heaved it up, arms quivering beneath the weight. He kept his feet by sheer effort of will and charged the sizzling wall once again, trying to push through using the shield as a battering ram. Through one of the skull’s empty eye sockets as large as his whole head, he could see Callan fighting with skill and strength Lothar had not realized his son possessed. He was holding his own.

Then the throng of brown and green bodies stepped back. Some of them stared down at the center of their circle, others had their gazes turned elsewhere. The lightning wall hissed and spat. Another blast sent Lothar hurling backward. He landed hard, his body spasming. Two of his soldiers lifted him to his feet.

Callan was engaged in combat with one of the green orcs, a massive beast with a topknot and a jaw tattooed entirely black. The boy lunged forward with his sword, but the orc trapped the blade with his own—a primitive, jagged thing that looked like an animal’s jawbone. He yanked the weapon from Callan’s hands.

Callan grunted, but stayed on his feet. The orc’s lip curled. He lifted Callan’s blade, intending to shame his enemy by felling him with the hilt of his own weapon, but the leader shouted a protest. The orc lowered the sword and stepped back, ceding his prey. A black hand shot out, spun Callan around, and then wrapped about the boy’s throat.

“Callan!” cried Lothar. “Look at me, boy.”

The orc turned, staring at Lothar, his grip on Callan never slacking. Slowly, carefully, Callan moved his head to look at his father. There was fear in those eyes, as there would be in any sane creature’s. Lothar could not bear to see it, not in Cally’s eyes. He, too, was afraid, horribly afraid, more frightened of what was unfolding with a dreadful inevitability than of his own death.