So, this is your plan now! she thought defiantly at the mist.A bold choice, but overreaching!

To emphasize her defiance, she spread her hands wide as if welcoming this new attack. However, nothing happened. There was no sudden materialization of the dread queen nor even a further chuckle.

“Play your games, then,” the high priestess said out loud. “I have more serious matters with which to deal.”

Once more she trod on, scattering the vermin and fighting for footing. At last the night elf seemed to edge closer to the shrouded keep. Tyrande felt in part that her utter determination now aided her in making progress; the Nightmare was bending — at least somewhat — to her will. Nevertheless, she took the added precaution of making a silent prayer to Elune that the keep would neither abruptly disappear nor recede at the last moment.

The smell of decay, already present, grew more powerful. The ground became more slick. At times Tyrande could almost swear that it pulsated, as if some great thing slowly breathing. The high priestess told herself that this was merely the Nightmare seeking to break her resolve, but she moved more warily nonetheless.

Then her foot slipped. Tyrande could do nothing to keep herself from falling face-first into the nauseating muck. A foul slime covered her lips and burned her tongue. She quickly spat it out, not certain if it was poisoned.

Her glaive lay some distance away, the point of one blade obscured in the fog. Tyrande pushed herself to a kneeling position, the effort taking more than she expected. The ground was so slick here that her hands could barely find a hold.

A scraping sound turned her attention back to the weapon.

Something was pulling it into the mist. The glaive slid along the ground, more and more of it disappearing.

The night elf lunged for it, only to fall flat again. Now only the tip of one blade remained visible.

Calming herself, she summoned forth the light of Elune, directing it toward the glaive —

Something slithered behind Tyrande. The night elf immediately looked in that direction, but saw nothing. Quickly, she returned her attention to the glaive.

It was gone.

Azshara’s chuckle once more touched Tyrande’s ears.

Trying to whirl to the source of the sinister laugh, Tyrande only succeeded in miring herself even more. She finally resorted to Elune’s light again, hoping that it could make the ground harder.

But as she attempted this, once more she heard slithering.

Tyrande refused to give up her effort but could not help also trying to see what was coming toward her —

Something muscular but moist curled around her throat with the harshness of a whip. Tyrande abandoned her spell to struggle with what was now choking off her air.

It lifted the high priestess more than two feet from the ground. At the same time, the slithering grew louder.

And again came the too familiar laughter.

“Such a darling, beautiful creature you are! I had forgotten!”

Tyrande, still struggling to breathe, was turned to her right.

A monstrous, blue-green face leered at her. It was elven, yet almost akin to some monstrous fish. Finlike projections extended not only from the head, but coursed down the scaled back. Indeed, scales covered the face and curved chest as well.

The hands were webbed and clawed, more like those of some ocean predator. They, though, were still more akin to a night elf’s form than the lower part of the thing’s body. Rather than legs, it moved upon what appeared some combination of a snake’s and an eel’s slippery torso.

It was, in fact, the lengthy, spiny tail of that torso which sought with growing chance of success to strangle Tyrande.

“So pretty,” it cooed in Azshara’s voice.

Despite her losing battle for air, Tyrande stared wide-eyed at the creature. It was and was not the queen. There was just enough of Azshara’s features in the scaled face, though the eyes were fiery red orbs that sought to burn into the high priestess’s mind.

And all around them, other slithering forms converged. Those that were female bore some resemblance to night elves, but the males were more primitive and savage. Their faces had become like those of carnivorous fish, and it was clear from their eager red orbs that they would not have been averse to tasting her flesh.

If this was Azshara, then Tyrande knew that these could only be the Highborne, the caste of loyal servants who had joined her in her madness. Nothing had existed for them but to serve her glory, even if thousands of other elves perished.

Now…they still served her. Now, they, like Azshara, had become a horror of which Tyrande was familiar. The serpent form was unmistakable.

They were naga. The foul underdwellers of the seas.

“Once I offered you a place in my court,” the queen murmured cheerfully as with her tail she pulled Tyrande so near that only inches separated their faces. A thick stench emanated from Azshara…a stench associated with a corpse left rotting for days in the waters. “Such a fine lady-in-waiting you would have made…”

Tyrande struggled to call upon Elune. Yet the light she already wielded only faded more. As it decreased, the naga pressed closer, more eagerly. They crowded her…

“And serve me you still shall…” the queen said with a fanged smile.

The night elf’s legs began to meld together. Azshara was turning her into a naga.

Tyrande pulled tighter at the coil around her throat. She could hardly keep conscious, much less think.

Yet in that last haze of consciousness, Malfurion’s face filled her thoughts. He said nothing, only gave her a look of encouragement.

It stirred the high priestess to one more effort to call upon her patron. Although Tyrande could not speak, she mouthed Elune’s name.

The silver glow of the Mother Moon filled her.

She lost consciousness.

Azshara — all the naga — were nowhere to be seen. Tyrande lay motionless on the slick ground, the carrion bugs slowly encroaching on her body. The mists tightened around the high priestess.

But Tyrande still did not move. She lay there, with her hands at her throat…around her throat.

As if she had been strangling herself.

The stout walls of Orgrimmar lacked the “cultured” touch of Stormwind City’s, but their savage glory could not be ignored. Tall and with massive watchtowers overseeing the surrounding lands, they offered warning to any foolish enough to attack that a high price in blood would be paid. Stern orc guards patrolled the walkways inside, and it was not uncommon to see among their number the Darkspear trolls, tauren, and even the undead Forsaken.

And though the interior might have seemed to humans as a barbaric place, with its populace divided into small valleys rather than quarters and its village-like construction more in tune with the nomadic past of the orcs, it was clear that Orgrimmar was as important a center of community to those who dwelled there as the capital of Stormwind. Thousands lived here, trading, learning, preparing for war…

Lying at the base of the mountain nearest the valley of Durotar, Orgrimmar was a symbol of the struggle the great liberator Thrall had faced to finally give his followers a true home. As Thrall had done in naming the valley after his murdered father, so had he named the city for the warchief who had taken the then-escaped slave and gladiator into his protection and who had later chosen Thrall as his successor.

Thrall himself ruled from Grommash Hold, set in the Valley of Wisdom, a central part of the capital. Grommash Hold displayed every bit the barbaric beauty of the orc warchief’s domain, with great, rounded buildings topped with sharp spikes, huge rounded entranceways leading inside, and displays on many of the gray stone walls that marked past victories of both the warchief and the Horde in general. Among those displays were the fearsome, mummified heads of the creatures used by the Burning Legion, weapons and armor from the demons themselves, and, further on, armor and banners of another foe — the Alliance. That the last was now an ally did not matter to the orcs — these had been victories and so were honored as such.