I've Recieved Only Few Eggs

The bladed edge of the battle axe grated against the metal skin of the robot walker, making it give way and opening into a cut on the tin. The dwarf took a step back and swung again, aiming for, and hitting, the same area, deepening the severe cut. "Take that ye pile o' trash!" he yelled at it as he swung his axe yet another time.

About 30 yards away, three people in armor sat by a fence, and waited for the dwarf to finish his task. There was a human man wearing chainmail and brandishing a heavy looking longsword; a gnome man with a long purple robe; and a night elf female wearing leather armor, petting what looked like a panther.

"Okay, is he done yet? We've literally been waiting here for a half a hour." the gnome complained. He has been leaning up against the fence for the whole time they've been waiting, and his legs are beginning to show just how tired he was.

"Oh would you be patient, Elroy?" the elf begged him "Let him have his fun for now. You know how stressed he's been with all the spellcasters we've been going up against, and he just got that new axe! This is the happiest he's been in a long time, and I think you should be happy for him."

"Danaria is right, gnome." the man calmly said "It is not often Vanisti finds joy in his craft. If we do not grace him with these periods of self-fulfillment, then I fear his moral would drop, allowing all of us to be in grave danger should a threat overtake us."

Elroy kicked some dirt up from the ground, the fine powder drifting into the sky. "Yeah I suppose. But you have to admit it has taken him quite a long time to finish up, right?!" He has gotten off the fence now, orchestrating his anger with his body now.

They hear an obvious crunch in the background, the dwarf now pounding the corpse of the metal walker into the dirt, seemingly out of frustration. "Don't! Ever! Scratch! Me! Again!" he screams as he puts the final nails in his coffin. He drops his war axe and buckles over, panting and heaving.

"Oh dear...” Danaria mutters under her breath. She stands up and goes to the fence. "Hey Vanisti, are you finished?! You look a bit tired, maybe it's time to stop for today?!" she yells out at him.

The dwarf turns around, picks up his axe, and starts off back to his group. "Aye, that sounds like a right good plan!" he yells back, his voice straining.

Elroy sighs in relief. "Oh finally, we can finish this stupid quest!"

"Oh shut up Elroy." Danaria snaps at him. She turns back to the slow walking dwarf, who was just getting to their waiting place by the fence. "Did you have a good time Van?"

"Aye girlie, this axe must be contesting for my hand, for she is a beauty!" He takes the axe and hugs the blades against his chest.

"Alright, enough with the romance for inanimate objects. Hey, Juan, can we go turn this thing in now or what?" the gnome quips to the man, grinning because of his apparent triumph in the field of comedy.

"I've told you countless times, my name is Jaune!" he said with a raised voice, though his body showed no sign of anger. "And yes, if Vanisti is finished with his task, we can go to the Marshal and inform him that we've finished ceasing function to fifteen of these Harvest Walkers."

"Okay good, I'm just about sick of this god forsaken desert." Elroy was already yards ahead of the rest of the group by the time they gathered all their things, his legs obviously stiff as a board. They strode along the dusty earth, kicking up dirt into the air with every tired step, as they made their way to Sentinel Hill.



The wind scarred them as they walked, the horrendous desert heat barraging them with unpleasant waves of inhumed heat. It made the group tired and angry, but none more than the wizard Elroy. Dragging his feet, he wouldn't stop moaning and groaning if someone paid him. "Uuuugh, if I knew I'd have to go through this I'd have never joined your little 'team' Jaune."

"Please Elroy, we can start blaming people when we get to civilization, but for now just stop tal-” She stops mid-sentence and looks off into the distance, her acute hunter vision picking up subtle movements from a few miles away. "Stop." she warns everybody. Sensing the seriousness of the situation, the team stops, crouching low out of instinct.

What she saw was a flicker of a red cape on a very disjointed looking lithe figure. She knew that since this was a contested area, no Alliance troop would dare wear red in this zone; and that anyone that thin must be an undead. They were being scouted by the Horde.

"Quick, do what I do." she asked quietly. She strode up to them and pulled out their map of the area, making pointing gestures at it as she spoke. "There's an undead on that hill over there. I'm fairly sure she's a scout for a larger party. We need to trick her so that we can catch her and silence her until we can get to the Marshal."

"How do ye' suppose we do that then, girlie?" Vanisti asked while nodding, trying to make their impromptu ruse look more convincing to the scout.

She tapped hardly on the piece of parchment and raised her voice. "We go into that cave over there, and we go deep!" She pointed at a small cave to the left of the group, which didn't look like it went deeper than half a mile into the earth.

Everyone nodded and headed inside the cave. They had Jaune and Elroy stay near the entrance, behind a couple of stalagmites as to surprise the woman. Danaria and Vanisti went slowly into the cave's main channel, as to give the illusion that they were regaining their energy and as such easy targets.

Sure enough, after a few minutes pass, an undead woman wearing a red cape appears through the mouth of the cave, carefully looking around. She did not see the two men though, and within a blink of an eye, Elroy Polymorphs the woman into a sheep, and Jaune quickly drapes a net over the creature and binds it together. The sheep morphs back after a few seconds and voila, one captured Horde scout!

They lay the struggling undead woman against the cave wall, crowding around her in case she tries anything. Her feet are bound, as are her hands behind her back. "Alright you Horde traitor, why are you following us?" Elroy asked forcefully, keeping his rage at the forefront of his speech.

"Go rot you pigs!" the woman yelled, trying to get her arms apart "I won't tell you anything as long as you align with that human's leaders!" She bent forward and spit onto Jaune's chainmail boots.

Jaune's hands transformed into fists in the blink of an eye, and in another he had punched the woman at a force rivaling a train. He grabbed her deteriorating hair and pulled her close to his face. "Listen here you underling," he said, command and fury obvious in his low voice "if you don't tell us who you're working for, and how many of you there are, I will not think twice about killing you right here. Now tell us what we want to know."

The undead woman silted her eyes and whispered "You'll never know, as long as you still serve Wyrn."

The man backed up, fire in his eyes. With one motion, he drew his sword, and dropped it over the girl's skull, breaking it right in half. No scream, just a crack. He picked the blade up out of the woman and banged it against the wall, cleaning all the weird liquids off of it, and he sheathed it once again. "We need to get to the Marshal, now."

As he strode to the mouth of the cave with haste, the others lagged behind him, dumbfounded at their companions sudden violent outburst toward what amounted to an innocent woman. It had been a powerful moment that had changed their outlooks for a while, though everyone knew that he was right, they needed the Marshal, or they'd be in big trouble.



They ducked and weaved around the dead trees in their path, completely unsure of where their impending attack will come from. Tensions ran high as they dicked exited the dead forest and climbed over the last large sand dune, the tower meters away, and the Marshal almost within earshot.

Then a hitch. An arrow whistled by Elroy's head and stuck itself inside Vanisti's thigh, making him stagger. "Argh!" he yelled out, his voice imbued with pain. "I've been hit lads, go on without me, I'll hold them off!"

"We aren't going anywhere without you, Van!" Danaria assured as she broke her stride and backtracked to Vanisti's position. She took out her bow and fired a few shots at their attackers, getting one in the head, and another in the side. With two of them incapacitated, she bent down and quickly pulled the arrow out of the dwarf's leg, making sure no leftover flint or poisons were left in his system.

She left a bandage by his side and started running again, as Jaune and Elroy seemed to already be inside the keep. Van wrapped and secured his bandage, able to get to his feet and continue on. He couldn't keep up with Danaria, but he was at least able to defend himself.

He seen Danaria run up the ramp into the tower, and just as she got into the gate, two trolls ran on both sides of him and lunged for an attack. Thinking quickly, he pulled out his axe and blocked the strikes from the left attacker with its head, strafing away from the thrusts of daggers on the right. He turned, pulling his axe along with him, and threw the blade at the right troll, smashing the edge into its stomach, and letting it fall to the ground along with the unconscious body of one of his attackers.

He rushed to retrieve his weapon from the downed enemy, though he was too slow. As his hand touched the metal of the handle, he was shocked to feel a dagger being stuck inside his right shoulder. Trying to save himself from any more pain, he took the handle and swung it as hard as he could as he spun around, his axe aiming right for the troll's head.

Darkness. He'll never know if his attack connected, or even what happened in that split second between thoughts, because the assassin had used his other dagger and stabbed Vanisti in the back of the neck. As his body fell, so did the assassin’s, an axe embedded inside its neck.



The three surviving members of the party all rushed inside of the tower, having just collectively seen the death of their friend. They stampeded inside and just started yelling the Marshal's name, if not getting his attention then hopefully getting at least noticed. Within a few seconds Marshal McBride came rushing down to them from overhead, obviously distressed himself. "What, what, what is it?! Can't you see we're being attacked?!" he yelled at the group, three armored soldiers rushing past him.

"That's why we're here, sir!" Elroy spoke up "Our friend is out there, and he was struck down fending off a couple of their rogues. None of us know the art of resurrection yet, so we request one of your medics to assist us!"

"Yes yes, fine, you can have one, as long as you try to take out as many of those fiends as possible!" They nodded and the Marshal struck his sword against the stone floor. "Elvira! Get out here, you're on a mission!"

From the back room, a thin human girl in ornate priestess wear quickly strode out into the main chamber of the tower, dusting herself off and saluting when she finished. "Sir yes sir." she mumbled, apparent that she hasn't had formal military training.

"Elvira, you are to assist this group of adventurers in any way they see fit. They are a very promising asset to this battle, and any harm that comes to them, you will treat immediately, understood?" the Marshal stated, his voice more commanding than before.

"I'll do my best, Marshal." She feigned excitement, gripping her staff tightly. "We should hurry then, in this time the horde would be at the wall."

Without anything else to say, the group ran out of the gate and down the ramp. Many guards were combating the attacking forces all around them as they ran past, the bodies of both sides piling up very quickly.

They ran up the hill where Vanisti's corpse was located and immediately got jumped from all sides. Danaria quickly drew her short-sword and struck one of the orcs in the chest, making him fall with ease. She turned around just in time to see one of the assailants blast Elroy in the stomach with his club, and Jaune drop his hammer over its head.

While they were busy holding back the attack, Elvira was kneeling down next to Vanisti's body, chanting, as a ring of holy light appeared around her, the light it gave off being absorbed into Vanisti. A large tauren warrior charged at the ceremony behind the woman, though Jaune was able to stop him by swinging at his knee, crippling him quickly.

With the ceremony complete, a brilliant flash of light encompassed a large area of the battlefield, and as it dies down, a newly restored dwarf stood proud with his war axe over his head. He gave a blood boiling scream, and charged forward, dropping his axe onto the squirming tauren's head. "Ah! 'Tis good to be back already!"



With their team back in full swing the battle ended pretty quickly, most of the horde invasion team retreating once they couldn't penetrate the keep as easily as expected. With the group's help, the total casualties of the battle was only 76; only 18 of those being Alliance troops. The battle never made it into the Keep's barrier, so everyone just left the horde bodies where they lie, allowing the desert winds to mask the battle scars.

"Thank you for your help heroes," the Marshal says, more calm now that a whole country wasn't attacking his building "without you four -- plus our medic -- I think it's safe to say that we might not have made out as good as we did. You saved a lot of lives today, and you should be proud of that." He gave a salute, his gratitude for their help coming out in full force with that display of military trust.

Everyone but Elroy gave a salute back, the gnome preferring to take a bow for his efforts. As the meeting ended and the group exited the large concrete building, Vanisti stretched his back and said "Well, where shall we go now, ey?"

Jaune looked toward the setting sun and said "Wherever we want to, Van." and stepped down from the ramp, following the footpath to the right, his newly reunited team following right behind him.