World of Warcraft: The Shattering: Prelude to Cataclysm Page 0,115
reached into a small pouch she carried by her side. Her fingers closed on one of her totems. The elements responded—the sky was suddenly ripped open by jagged bolts of lightning, several of which shot like spears directly at the enemy. Many of them fell at once. But in the chaos that ensued, another zeppelin moved into position and unloaded its dangerous passengers.
Magatha snarled and lifted her hands to the sky. Lightning speared one of the zeppelins. It caught fire immediately, the blaze racing hungrily along, devouring the enormous rigid balloon frame in seconds. The pilot somehow managed to steer it so that it careened right into the flight tower.
Magatha swore. The wyverns trapped within would be of no use to them as burned corpses. The late goblin pilot had made the destruction of his ship count.
But there was no time to ponder the incident. A huge explosion rocked High Rise of Thunder Bluff. The remaining zeppelin was dropping bombs. Bodies and pieces of bodies flew up into the air, illuminated by the dim, incongruously pink light of dawn. Rahauro grabbed his matriarch and steered her back from the conflict. She struck him angrily and returned to the fray.
“Get what wyverns we have and attack from the air!” she cried. “We’ve downed one of the zeppelins; let’s get the other one!”
“Other … two,” Rahauro corrected.
A huge storm crow landed beside Baine. It shapeshifted, twisted, and Hamuul told his chieftain, “We lost one of the zeppelins. But all their attention is focused on High Rise. Stormsong’s thundercloud worked perfectly.”
Baine nodded his approval. The first wave was the most dramatic. They had the element of surprise, of shock and startlement, and Magatha and her best fighters were swarming over that level now. They were fighting the several dozen who had been lowered from the zeppelins to attack and distract them from the slower, but harder to stop, rogues stealthily moving to Hunter, Elder, and Spirit Rises. Baine was giving the Grimtotem a taste of their own medicine—cutting them off from one another. Except whereas the Grimtotem had slain the shaman, druids, and hunters, Baine’s troops were merely cutting the ropes of the bridges that connected the smaller rises to the main rise. Some arrows, bullets, and spells would reach across the space between the rises, but the vast majority would not.
Several of the mercenary trolls he had hired were also hard at work. They were swiftly and implacably scaling the sheer bluff. Bombs had been carefully placed for just such an attempt; these were carefully defused.
The lifts, not surprisingly, were set to blow. These were more complicated and were taking much longer. For the moment the distraction on High Rise had worked, and no one had thought to blow the lifts.
Yet.
* * *
What wyverns were left were swiftly prepared for flight, and the Grimtotem took the fight to the zeppelins. Grimtotem hunters mounted on the winged, lionlike creatures were able to fire directly on the crew and fighters on the deck—even those druids who had assumed storm crow form and were swooping down for the fight. But the Grimtotem were met with equal force as guns and arrows were fired directly at them. Magatha watched as one Grimtotem hunter was sprung upon by a great horned cat that sank its teeth in the hapless tauren’s throat. Druid and hunter both toppled from the wyvern, the druid changing into storm crow shape a scant few feet above the rise. The hunter struck the ground hard and lay still.
Corpses were everywhere. It was time to retreat. There were Forsaken magi in a cavern containing bodies of water known as the Pools of Vision; they could, if properly persuaded, create a portal to whisk Magatha away to safety. The traditional ramp that led down to each level had been bombed by a zeppelin and was still smoking. Magatha gestured, then turned and leaped down to the second rise. Rahauro and several others followed her, weapons in hand. Bloody hand-to-hand combat was rampant as well. A shadow fell over her, and she glanced up to see one of the two remaining zeppelins.
“To the Pools of Vision!” she cried. “And the lifts—detonate the bombs, then join me!”
“At once, Elder Crone,” Cor said. The bombs had been his plan, and now he hurried off to carry out her orders.
Magatha hastened up the lodge that led to the bridge. In the space of a few more heartbeats she would be—