Alleria stared at him. His eyes, though still filled with tears, shone now with the radiant white light. Awe shivered through her. Bright… Turalyon, my love, you are so bright.

"Sons of Lothar! The Light is with you … as it al­ways has been, and always will be. For Azeroth!"

His hammer glowed brighter than the day, and many of the captured orcs nearby fell to the ground screaming as its aura burned at their eyes. Turalyon's soldiers were strengthened by the glow, however, and cheered as the gryphon rose, carrying Turalyon and Alleria after the Wildhammers, toward the Dark Portal.

"I would I could stand with them," he murmured softly. She kissed his neck.

"You do, beloved. Their hearts are filled with the Light… and so you are there."

The scene around the Dark Portal was utter chaos. Tu­ralyon had told his troops the unvarnished truth — Khadgar would need defending. He just hadn't realized how much he and his friends would be defending the wizard from.

Danath, Khadgar, Kurdran, and several others had arrived before them and were fiercely fighting their way to the portal. It seemed the orcs had rallied. Ner'zhu’s abrupt departure had stranded several clans on Draenor, and all of them had realized the same thing — the Dark Portal was the only stable rift, and the only one that led to a world they knew was hospitable.

Nor was the battle just on Draenor. One was raging on the other side of the portal as well — it would seem that once again, the orcs had wrested control of the portal from the Alliance. They were trying to push their way through the portal and back into Draenor, unaware of the cataclysm gripping their homeworld. The Alliance forces there were holding them at bay for the moment, but Turalyon could expect no aid. He and this handful were all that stood between the Horde and Azeroth.

But they weren't here to win a battle, he reminded himself. That was entirely secondary right now. Their goal was simply to protect Khadgar and the other magi while they closed the portal once and for all.

"Do what you have to do," he told Khadgar, who stood nearby, the other magi clustered around him. The young-old archmage nodded and raised his hands, letting his eyes close. His staff was in one hand, the Skull of Gul'dan in the other, and he began to chant, energies coalescing and swirling around him.

The orcs outnumbered them by a significant mar­gin, and were fighting in a frenzy, desperate to escape their collapsing world by any means necessary. The ground was trembling so violently warriors could barely keep their feet, and the battle devolved into mere brawling as orc and human swung wildly at each other, unable to concentrate enough to attack more effectively. The sky split with lightning storms appear­ing and disappearing at blurring speeds, stars visible one instant and the sun the next. The planet was go­ing mad.

Between skirmishes Turalyon caught glimpses of Khadgar. The other magi had joined in now, all of them outlined in radiance, and when he squinted Turalyon could just see the trails of energy they were pouring into Khadgar, who stood at their center. He knew his friend was absorbing all that magic, so that he could focus it upon the portal and destroy it for good.

Just as Khadgar's chanting reached a fever pitch, Tu­ralyon heard a strange ripping sound, sharp but some­how faint as well, as if it had occurred both nearby and very far away. He had heard something similar atop the Black Temple, and after dispatching another orc he glanced around and saw a strange shimmer in the air not far from them, a short ways behind the magi. A new rift!

The earth shook beneath his feet and on pure gut instinct Turalyon leaped backward. A fissure opened where he'd been standing just a second before, widen­ing like a hungry mouth. Cracks raced around jaggedly and then suddenly an enormous chunk of earth surged upward, carrying with it a small cluster of men and orcs, bucking them off like an unbroken steed as it turned wildly in midair.

Khadgar hadn't exaggerated. Draenor quite literally was physically tearing itself to pieces.

He was still staring at the floating hunk of earth when Khadgar raised his staff high and a beam of light shot from it to strike the Dark Portal in its center. The light was too bright to look upon, but unlike the Holy Light this was many colors all at once, swirling and dancing and shifting. It was pure magic wrought into a powerful spell, and when it struck the whirling surface of the portal he heard a sound like shattering glass. Then the Dark Portal began to crumble, its curtain of energy splitting and fragmenting as the spell unwrought it.

"It is done," Khadgar said wearily, planting his staff against the ground and leaning heavily upon it. Then he looked up and spotted one of Kurdran's dwarves, a young Wildhammer who had just hurled his stormhammer at a hulking orc that had threatened Danath. "You!" Khadgar shouted. "Take these!" He slammed the skull into his sack and thrust the unwieldy bundle at the surprised dwarf. "Take it and fly back to Azcrouh! This needs to get to the Kirin Tor!"

"But sir," the young dwarf said, "are ye nae coming through yersels?"

Khadgar shook his white head. "No. We've got to shut it down here. It's the only way to make sure the damage happening here won't follow us into Azeroth."

Turalyon inhaled swiftly. So there it was, then. Khadgar had never been one to mince words and he'd just said blundy what they'd all suspected. Only this one dwarf would make it back. The rest of them would be stranded in a world that lurched closer to nothingness by the second.

So be it.

The paladin saw the young Wildhammer hesitate, not sure how to respond, and then gasped as he saw the gleaming are of a massive axe slicing directly to­ward the unwary dwarf. But before Turalyon could shout a warning, a stormhammer flashed past, striking the axe wieldcr with a thunderclap that rang in his ears, and axe and orc alike fell to the ground.

"Go on, lad!" Kurdran ordered, his stormhammer returning to his grasp as he wheeled Sky'ree alongside the surprised dwarf.

The younger dwarf nodded, leaning down to grab the sack from Khadgar and then nudging his gryphon with heel and knee and elbow. She responded at once, beating her wings hard and rising like a shot, then ar­rowing straight for the collapsing portal. But as she passed under its cracking arches, the sack flared with light, and the portal responded, the resulting glare blinding them all. Turalyon heard the gryphon shriek in pain, and the dwarf screamed as well, but he could not see what had happened to them. The terrible sounds were drowned out by a ferocious rumbling. Be­fore he fully realized what had happened, there was a deafening crash and Khadgar was flying backward. He landed hard, blacking out for a second. When he came to an instant later, aching and barely able to breathe, he looked immediately toward the portal.

It was gone.

The giant statues that had guarded it had tumbled to unrecognizable boulders. The three pillars that had formed the gateway, that had contained the rift in glori­ous carved majesty, were now nothing but rubble. No sight of Azeroth remained.

They had done it. They had destroyed the rift and the portal. And now, they were forever cut off from everything they had known.

All around himб Horde and Alliance were staggering to their feet, only to feel Draenor buck beneath them again. The orcs took off, not understanding, as Khadgar did, that there was really nowhere for them to run. The portal's collapse had apparently injured Draenor further, and the upheavals grew in intensity and frequency. They were constandy jarred and tossed about as if they were a small boat on an angry sea, the ground rippling like water and the sky thicker than fog. What an ignominious death, Khadgar thought with a hint of wry amusement. Having one's brains bashed out by a chunk of earth. He looked around one last time at his friends — Danath still on his feet, still fighting what orcs hadn't fled. Alleria had fallen and Turalyon was helping her to her feet, quickly wrapping linen around a nasty gash on her arm.