Happy Diwali To You All.
*****
At the same time, deep within the fortress of the Gray Dwarves, the commander-in-chief, Kurman, stood upon the highest battlement. Though his true years numbered scarcely four centuries—a span in which most of his kind would still wield hammer and axe with tireless precision—his appearance bore the weight of twice that age. His ashen skin, hardened and scarred like volcanic stone, sagged heavily around his crimson-ringed eyes that burned with a weary, haunted glow. Once, his beard had been a thing of pride, braided with iron clasps and streaked with the soot of the forges, but now it hung ragged and unkempt, streaked with white and flecked with ash. Years of endless war, and the burden of command had carved him into something more specter than dwarf—a Gray Dwarf that seemed already halfway claimed by Laduguer's silent halls.
His gaunt fingers dug into the cold battlement stones as he peered out across the horizon. The Black Lake stretched vast and endless before him, its surface hidden beneath a choking veil of dark purple-black fog. The fog writhed like a living thing, never dispersing with wind nor yielding to the touch of any spell or flame, as though it fed on the very despair of those who beheld it. Behind him, fortress torches burned with the sickly glow of alchemical fire, yet their light could not drive away the biting chill that gnawed at his bones.
The silence was the worst of it. Not even the Underdark's usual chorus of dripping water and distant beasts remained. All sound seemed swallowed by the fog.
Kurman's breath rattled in his chest. He had commanded armies against mind suckers, beholders, and even against the hated surface dwarves whose sunlight still haunted his dreams—but this was different. This stillness was not of patience but of inevitability. He could feel it, heavy as chains on his chest. Though he spoke no word, in his soul Kurman knew: something was coming, something vast and terrible, and it hung over them like a shadow that no forge-fire could banish. The fog was not merely a veil. It was a promise.
For months, the undead within the area had not stirred, confined always within that cursed boundary. No matter what tricks or probes he sent—alchemical fire, enchanted crystals, or detection wards—none pierced the shroud. Even magic that once unveiled psionic cloaks and illithid trickery was rendered useless. The fog resisted everything. At first, he had hoped the stalemate might endure, that the dead were imprisoned by whatever curse held them there.
But every commander knows hope is a poison.
Kurman had seen too much death to mistake silence for safety.
"It's all Rex's fault," muttered a voice beside him. One of the gray dwarf guards, face smeared with forge ash, sneered openly. "He dared send his private guard with the Black Dragon Ball to sniff out traces of the wyrm. Now the lake broils with curses. This place is so cursed that we dare not set foot within it."
Kurman's red gaze slid sideways. "Be respectful to the king," he said flatly. "It is one thing to curse him in your heart, another to spit on his name with your tongue."
The guard stiffened but did not look ashamed—Gray Dwarves rarely did. Their culture did not breed guilt, only obedience born of fear. He simply bowed his head slightly, voice sharp but subdued. "I understand, Commander."
Another of his personal guards, older and broad-shouldered, stepped forward and pressed a hand to his chest in salute. "Lord Kurman, you should rest. You have not closed your eyes properly since Laduguer's-day. Leave the wall to us. The men whisper that even stone will crack without reprieve. You must endure longer than stone."
Kurman exhaled slowly. His bones ached, but not from age—his very soul felt eroded. Yet he nodded. "Very well. You will watch the fog. Do not slacken. If it stirs… sound the alarm before you breathe your last."
He took one last look at the horizon, at the rotting breath of the fog curling and coiling above the water and land. Then, wearied as only the Gray Dwarf can be, he descended to his chamber. Sleep was precious to his people, not for comfort but survival. In the depths of the Underdark, even slumber was rationed like water.
But as his weary body sagged onto the iron cot, the fog began to move.
Silently, inexorably, it crept forward, expanding past the cursed boundary of what they knew. Like an ocean tide, it rolled across the broken stones, blanketing the land as if the world itself were suffocating beneath a burial shroud.
Arthas had always kept the fog contained before, weaving an illusion into its edges so the dwarves believed it could not cross beyond the lake lands. But now, with a thought, he dismissed the constraint. The false safety shattered.
The sentinels on the wall were the first to notice. One opened his bleary eyes from a restless watch and froze. His jaw went slack as he saw the fog slithering toward the fortress.
He had only a breath to cry out.
"Enemy attack!!!"
The cry echoed once—then was drowned beneath the sound of tearing flesh. The fog hit the walls of Magic Force Field a storm, and from within it came horrors.
Undead poured forth, their forms dragging from the mist in grotesque silence until they struck the sentries with feral violence. Skeletons, ghouls, corpses stitched from many bodies, towering wrapped mummies dripping curses from their limbs—the wave of death tore into the dwarves before the alarm could even finish sounding. The air filled with the crunch of bone and the ragged screams of men whose throats were torn before they could pray to their god.
Kurman awoke to the sound of bells and the stink of blood. He staggered from his cot, his soul heavy with the knowledge that the stalemate had ended. The nightmare he had feared was possibly here, and it had come not as a siege but as a tide.
"What's going on?"
Kurman, who had been snatched from the restless grasp of shallow sleep, jolted upright, his scarred frame trembling with the echo of distant screams. The fortress shook faintly beneath his feet, the cold iron cot scraping against the basalt floor.
"Lord Kurman!" A subordinate burst into his chamber, face pale as stone-dust, armor rattling with panic. "The undead—creatures have begun to assail the fortress! The dark purple-black fog has moved!"
Kurman's heart plummeted, sinking into the pit of his chest as though dragged by chains of lead. For thirteen years he had feared this very moment, and now it had come.
He wasted no breath. His hand reached into the carved rune-circle that floated at his side, the personal vault of every high commander. From his storage rune, he drew forth his arms—sacred relics of a fading age.
First came the absorption shield, a massive slab of blackened mithril taller than his stooped form. Its surface was engraved with ancient magics of negation, each symbol faintly aglow, drinking the light around it as if hungering for energy. The shield did not merely block—it devoured, turning the venom of enemy sorcery into nothingness. Once, every fortress-lord of the Gray Dwarf had carried such a defense, but now it was a relic among relics, rarer than hope.
Then came his war-axe. Not just a weapon, but a legend wrought of steel and silver, its broad edge eternally scorched with the glyphs of Laduguer's high priests. The runes still hissed faintly, sparks of consecrated flame licking the edge, the lingering trace of divine fury that had once burned through legions of undead. This was no mere blade. This was the memory of gods etched in metal.
Once, long ago, weapons such as these had not been that rare. Once, entire legions had marched beneath banners of shadowfire, their shields radiant, their axes gleaming with consecrated flame, each one a wall against the crawling night. Once, the Gray Dwarf had looked upon armies of death and laughed, their faith a shield stronger than any wall of stone.
But that was long ago.
This war had lasted thirteen years.
Now, holy armaments were treasures rarer than diamonds in the Deep. Not because the Gray Dwarf had lost their craft—they remained the masters of forge and rune, unrivaled in skill—but because the lifeblood of such weapons had been bled dry. The priests who had blessed them were dead, their souls burned out by endless chanting and sacrifice. The rune-engravers had long since perished at their anvils, their last breaths given to finish one final line of sacred script. Even the blacksmiths, those stubborn titans of hammer and furnace, had been swallowed by battlefields where the dead did not stay down.
Weapons of war were not merely steel. Against the tide of necrotic corruption, steel alone was useless. Only the sacred—the runes, the blessings, the divine hatred of undeath—gave them weight. Without it, even the sharpest axe was nothing but dead iron, rusting in a dead hand.
The fortress itself bore the marks of desperation. Holy water had been sprayed in rivers across its battlements, hissing faintly whenever the black fog pressed too near. Entire caverns had been consecrated by ritual, chants of Laduguer thundering against the stone until priests bled from their mouths, their hearts cracking beneath the strain. And still it was not enough.
These weapons were rarities—treasures among treasures. For the Gray Dwarves, even with their millennia of smithing knowledge and their unrivaled skill in forging enchanted metals, the act of creating permanent magic weapons had always been a feat bordering on the very hard. A mundane blade, reforged with runes of power, could be shaped in months or years. But a weapon blessed by divine rites, bound permanently with the grace of holy energy, demanded more than smithing—it demanded sacrifices, wealth, rare catalysts, blessings that could drain the very life from low level priests who dared attempt them.
Even the Gray Dwarves, whose kingdom had endured for thousands of years, who alone could withstand the Underdark's merciless darkness with grim resilience, found such undertakings exhausting. These arms were rare even before this war, created only when kings and nobles poured endless fortunes into the forges and temples, knowing well that without them their kind would eventually fall prey to undeath. Blessed weapons were not things made lightly, nor things made often. A lesser race, without the patience of centuries and the iron foundations of a kingdom that spanned eras, would have collapsed long ago.
And yet, despite their rare treasure troves of enchanted metals, the war had devoured it all. At first, the capital's coffers flowed, and the forges roared like volcanic furnaces as high level smiths, runesmiths, priests, and enhancers labored in unity. Every priest chanted until their voices broke, every forge hammered until the anvils cracked. The Gray Dwarfs, in their stubborn fury, refused to yield a single inch of ground, believing coin, blood, and steel could hold the tide.
The price of survival had been ruinous. Millions of Gray Dwarves had already perished in the endless war—not merely soldiers, but miners, smiths, artisans, children, nobles, and priests. An entire people, generation upon generation, bled into the stone. Their stubbornness had held them here, yes, but it had also chained them to despair.
All of it was the work of Arthas.
Arthas the Deathlord. Arthas the Patient.
He never rushed. He never squandered. His war was not one of reckless slaughter, but of slow grinding inevitability. He struck, then withdrew. He allowed the dwarves to believe they had won, to chase him, to bleed themselves dry in pursuit. And always, always, he returned. His armies pressed, receded, circled like wolves, cutting deeper and deeper with each feint until the dwarves' strength ran out.
Every Gray Dwarf corpse left behind rose again in his service, each a mockery of the soul that once lived, while every dwarf slain meant a people one step closer to extinction. His war was attrition incarnate, an execution not by blade but by starvation, suffocation, despair.
The Deathlord did not meet them in open war. He did not hurl his full might upon their walls. No—he waged a war of attrition, intrusion, and mockery. With cruel cunning, he struck when it cost them most, retreating into the shadows before they could retaliate. Each raid forced them to arm themselves with their rarest weapons, each assault drained the strength of their already strained priesthood. And each Gray Dwarves slain rose again under Arthas's banner, swelling his legions while hollowing theirs. He fought not only with steel but with patience, eroding their strength day by day, grinding down their pride into despair.
The Gray Dwarves, in their pride, could not ignore him. To do so would be to invite further insult, further raids, further undead incursions into their heartlands. Bound by their stubbornness, they gave chase, they answered every intrusion with blood and fire, even when the cost outweighed the gain. And in doing so, they bled themselves dry, while Arthas only grew stronger.
It was a masterstroke of cruelty—an enemy who could not be defeated in a single battle, who refused to allow them the dignity of a decisive war. Arthas robbed them of victory even with their Pseudo Legendary Priests and Warriors ones surrounded in the Dark Purple - Black Fog even high legendary powers won't survive and could only run, he robbed them of peace, leaving them with only endless exhaustion. He was patient, they were stubborn, and so the war became an endless spiral of attrition.
Kurman knew this better than any. He had watched kings melt their vaults into coins and pour it into the forges. He had seen nobles sell the last jewels of their bloodlines, begging the smiths to fashion one more blessed weapon, one more shield of light. He had seen priests collapse, their souls ripped apart as they funneled every ounce of themselves into keeping the wards alive. For years, the Gray Dwarves had stood unbroken, armored in divine fury like a wall of gods.
But every wall has its cracks.
Wealth can be spent.
Priests can die.
And time—time rots even stone.
Now, thirteen years later, the once-glorious weapons of their people were scattered across the Kingdom of the Underdark, buried with their wielders, their flames extinguished.
Now, the once-proud Gray Dwarves host had been whittled away. Their fortresses, once overflowing with enchanted arms and barrels of holy water, now clung to the last of their dwindling relics. Their forges, once ceaseless in their hammering, now stood cold where masters had died. Their priests, once mighty in their chants, now dwindled to handfuls of survivors.
The truth was grim and undeniable: if they had not been Gray Dwarves—grim, unyielding, and forged by centuries of suffering in the Underdark—they would have collapsed long ago. No other race could have borne such a cost. No other kingdom could have endured such relentless bleeding. Only their ancient, ironbound will and their peerless mastery of smithing had allowed them to hold the line this long.
But the cracks were showing, and Arthas knew it.
Kurman tightened his grip on his axe, the old runes flickering like a dying flame, and strode toward the battlements. Outside, the alarm bells wailed, drowning beneath the sound of stone shattering, flesh ripping, and voices screaming as the black fog surged.
Kurman—ancient, weary, yet still unbroken—knew that this war was not merely one of armies, but of wills. The question was no longer whether the Gray Dwarves could win, but whether their stubbornness would hold longer than Death Knight's endless patience.
Kurman shook his head sharply, driving away the suffocating dread clawing at his thoughts, and strode to the fortress wall. The battlements trembled beneath his boots, every stone humming faintly with the strain of the protective circle.
The barrier was already active—its shimmering blue dome clung to the fortress like the last breath of a drowning man. Against the dark, suffocating miasma of the purple-black fog, it gleamed like a lone candle in endless night. The light pulsed, fragile, its runes flickering as though gasping for air. Each second, the fog surged against it, pressing, eating, drinking away its strength.
Beyond the wavering glow, the Underdark was a nightmare. The fog was alive—thick, oily, crawling with shadowy tendrils that writhed against the light as though eager to feast upon it. Shapes moved within it, half-glimpsed silhouettes: skeletal forms dragging steel weapons, ghoulish beasts crouching low like carrion wolves, and towering hulks of stitched flesh lurching like obscene statues of war. The cries of the damned whispered on the wind, carried in echoes from the fog's heart.
In the distance, seated astride a nightmare beast whose mane burned with ghostly green fire, was Arthas.
The Deathlord.
The Patient One.
The butcher of a thousand halls.
His presence poisoned the air itself. The Nightmare beneath him pawed the ground with hooves that struck sparks against the stone, each step warping the ground into withered black scars. Arthas lifted his hand, palm outward, and the fog responded like a living thing.
It surged toward him, twisting and funneling, drawn into his palm. The air howled, as though all of the Underdark were being inhaled into a void. Dark Purple-Black mist thickened, condensed, hardened in his grip, until at last it took shape:
A spear.
Not a weapon of steel or stone, but a vast, jagged pillar of condensed death and Dark Purple-Black Fog. Its shaft writhed with veins of oily light, and its tip was a void so absolute that it seemed to devour sight itself. Even from across the battlefield, the Gray Dwarves could feel it—a wrongness, a pressure in their chests, as though the spear aimed not at the barrier but at their very souls.