Warcraft: Official Movie Novelization

Gul’dan had always appeared to Durotan stooped and old, with a white beard and seamed face. But as the cloak fell away from his frame, leaving his torso bare in the growing morning light, it revealed a physique that made Blackhand look like a child. Muscles strained against the taut green skin of an orc who looked, as Grom Hellscream had said, as if he had the strength of five.

But that was not what had Durotan and all the others gaping in shocked silence. Durotan remembered when Gul’dan had come to the Frostwolves for the first time. He had worn this same cloak then. At the time, Durotan had been confused, unable to determine how the spines with the tiny skulls fixed atop them had been sewn into the fabric. Now, he understood.

The spines had not been attached to the cloak. They were protruding through it.

They and their macabre decorations were growing from Gul’dan’s body.

Gul’dan basked in the awe and horror his appearance inspired, and Durotan knew with a sick feeling that the fel-distorted monstrosity in front of him was more than likely right. This would not take long.

But Durotan resolved to make Gul’dan’s inevitable victory dearly bought. He stepped forward into the ring, shrugging off his own wolf-fur cloak and letting it slip to the ground. He stood, calculating, waiting, letting Gul’dan circle him.

And with a bellow, he sprang.

Moroes was dead, a withered, papery husk, sucked dry like the remnants of an insect when the spider has gorged. So poised and dignified in life, he now sprawled, legs akimbo, in front of a font gone sickly green which bubbled and emitted evil wisps of misty fel.

Lothar lifted his gaze from the dead castellan to the upper platform. He was both relieved and aghast to see his old friend standing there. He could not see the Guardian’s face, but his form was unnaturally erect, and his arms were held up to the sky.

Lothar caught the young mage’s eye. Khadgar nodded, moving slowly to the left, toward the scaffolding that supported the golem Medivh had been working on when they had first arrived. Lothar stepped to the right. With luck, they could pin the Guardian between them.

And do what? his sad, sick soul asked.

Something. Anything, his mind replied.

He had thought he would be angry, but instead he was more sorrowful than anything else. “Medivh,” he called, calmly, carefully.

Now, Medivh lifted his head, and horror spurted through Lothar. His face was still recognizable—but only barely. It was covered with lines that were like cracks in marble. His beard had been replaced by a line of small, downward-jutting horns. And the Guardian’s eyes were pitch black.

Casually, Medivh raised his arm. Energy pulsed, and Lothar was seized by the shape of a huge, sickly yellow hand and lifted into the air. The Guardian’s eyes flared, like a small eruption of green magma, and the magical hand tightened. Lothar’s breastplate began to crumple, as if he were a toy soldier squeezed too hard by a bored child.

From below and behind Khadgar hurled a blast of energy at Medivh’s back. Without even turning, Medivh countered the spell with his right hand, turning the blue missile back on its sender. He released his grip on Lothar, letting his old friend drop and turning his attention to Khadgar.

But Khadgar wasn’t there. Lothar lay still where he had fallen, feigning death for a long, tense moment. Then, Medivh begin to chant. He had listened to the Guardian summoning spells for years, but he had never heard anything like this. It made his throat turn dry, his skin crawl, and he would have known without being told that what was being spoken was the darkest evil that could be imagined.

Lothar used Medivh’s distraction to crawl to Khadgar in the mage’s hiding place—beneath the golem’s thick clay body.

Khadgar looked pale. “It’s the incantation to the orc home world. He’s opening the portal. We need to shut him up!”

The mage nodded, then froze. Lothar strained to listen. Medivh, no doubt having realized that the “dead” Lothar was no longer where he had been dropped, was moving overhead. Looking for them.

“Ideas?” hissed Lothar. Khadgar licked his lips, then leaped to his feet, shouting an incantation. Blue orbs of cracking fire exploded from his fingertips in the direction of the chanting. Chunks of stone were blasted from the pillars, toppling down in a dusty pile. But Medivh was nowhere to be seen.

“Very impressive,” and the voice seemed to come from everywhere. “Now try shutting him up.”

A green glow came from directly above them. The chanting had resumed, but the voice was no longer coming from the Guardian. It issued from the featureless clay face that now sported eyes of emerald fire, and a green slash of a mouth.

“Well,” Lothar quipped, “That went well.”