A multi-part, original Horror story previously published on Goodreads. A tie-in to a larger series still in the works.

Valla smelled the rotting dead from a mile away.

The air was warm despite the clouds that blanketed Khanduras as the demon hunter arrived in what was left of Holbrook—once a tiny, struggling farm community, now a deserted ghost town.
Or so it seemed; the heavy stench of putrification suggested that the residents were still present, just not among the living.

Valla’s mentor, Josen, stood in the center of the village, considering a pile of debris: scattered mason stones, upturned rock and soil.

He was dressed in the attire of the demon hunters’ calling. The soft light reflected dully off the plate armor that adorned half his body. His twin crossbows were slung from his thighs, within easy reach. His hood was down, and his cloak snapped in the gusting wind.

Valla was clothed in similar fashion, the greatest difference being the long, dark scarf she wore that even now covered the lower half of her face. The sawyer’s daughter slowed her horse, dismounted, and waited for a moment, silent and still, assessing.

There was a barely discernible, persistent hum. The only signs of life came from Josen and two other hunters, one searching the derelict structures, another standing near a rundown storehouse. Whatever had happened here, they were too late to do anything about it. Now it was a matter of looking for survivors. That was, after all, the second most important thing her people did: feed and shelter those left homeless in the aftermath of unthinkable catastrophe. Guide them, encourage them, heal them, educate and train them… to do the most important thing, should they so choose: become a demon hunter and annihilate the hellspawn responsible for evils like this.

Just another glorious day in the Corps.

Despite the sweltering heat on Gamma Dorian, Isaac White stayed cool.

No matter what, Isaac White always stayed cool. Not just because he wore a temperature-controlled hardskin. No, he stayed cool because in his line of work, if you didn’t stay cool, you could kiss your sweet ass goodbye.

Someday, maybe some chump would build a bomb capable of rattling Isaac’s cage, but that day was damn sure not today. Those panbrained, fekk-head Kel-Morians hadn’t even done a respectable job of hiding the detonator. Isaac could think of at least fifteen spots along the underside of the massive bridge that would have provided better concealment. But no, the idiots had placed the device just under the lip of a baseplate, practically in plain view.

Descending the dry gulch’s southern embankment had taken all of 30 seconds, and now Isaac found himself lying on his side, getting his first glance at the detonation system. The setup wasn’t just simple: it was archaic. An electronic time-delay device set to ignite several charges placed at intervals beneath the girders. The KMs had held the bridge and the territory surrounding it until a few days ago. They could have blown the bridge as they retreated, but instead they had opted to make a play at taking out the bridge and some Confed forces with it. And they didn’t think the Confederacy would check the bridge before crossing it? Stupid. Just plain stupid.

This stupidity was exactly why the Confederacy was sure to win the Guild Wars. The wars may have been dragging on for three years now, but there’d never been a doubt in Isaac’s mind that the home team would pull out the big “W” in the end.

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.

- Source: Official World of WarCraft website

The midday sun fixed its unflinching gaze upon the sands of Silithus, bearing mute witness to the multitudes forming ranks outside the Scarab Wall.

It continued its passage, though to the masses gathered below, it seemed as though the orb had stopped to cast down unrelenting waves of heat until the vast armies simply collapsed from exposure.

Amid the restless formations a lone night elf stood in quiet contemplation. Her companions eyed her with admiration; some, almost reverence. The others who were gathered–an assortment of representatives from every race in every land in the known world–viewed her with their own racial prejudices. After all, the blood feud between night elves and the likes of trolls and tauren dated back centuries.

No matter their affiliations, however, all who had come to battle that day shared one sentiment for the night elf: respect. Shiromar was like the sun above–impassive, unwavering, and unflinching. These qualities had served her well in the recent months, providing her with the strength to continue when all seemed lost; when the quest seemed neverending; and when her companions had simply given up.

There had been the watcher, and the Caverns of Time; there was the bronze dragon and the Broodlord and the squirming insect hives; then there were the shards and their keepers, the ancient dragons, none of whom would give up their charge easily. Coercion, ingenuity, and sometimes outright violence, all were employed to accomplish the task.

And all of this for one item, the item gripped in Shiromar’s hands even now: the Scepter of the Shifting Sands, reformed at last after a thousand years.

In the end, all roads had led here, to Silithus, and to the gates of the Scarab Wall. Here, where the Scepter was shattered.

Shiromar looked up at the sky and remembered a time when the sun had been eclipsed by dragons; when the Qiraji and silithid flooded over the legions of night elves in seemingly eternal waves; when hope seemed but a shadow. It seemed as if none would survive those terrible months; yet here she was, standing before the sacred barrier that saved their lives all those years ago, during the War of the Shifting Sands…

- Source: Official World of WarCraft website