Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 606: The Dark Portal’s Last Stand

Opening a stable portal in a place that's basically a magical blender set to "puree" is about as easy as teaching a troll to read poetry.

The Dark Portal? It gave zero damns about difficulty.

With a sound like a thousand wine glasses being hurled at a stone wall by angry tavern patrons, reality itself got chopped up finer than an ogre's table manners. The air writhed and twisted like a bag full of angry snakes.

Poor mortals who couldn't peek behind the cosmic curtain had their eyeballs scrambled worse than eggs at a Sunday brunch. Gavinrad, bless his confused soul, swore he could see his own hand sprouting from his thigh like some unholy flower.

Everyone stood there gawking like village idiots at a magic show, except Duke.

"Back off, you knuckleheads!" Duke's sharp bark snapped everyone back to reality faster than a cold bucket of water to the face.

Could holy light's golden glow really stand up to space itself having a tantrum?

Don't make me laugh until my sides split.

If Holy Shield could block chunks of reality flying around like shrapnel, they might as well call it "Universe-Proof Armor" and charge triple.

A pair of quick-thinking mages grabbed the shoulder plates of two paladins and yanked them backward. These armored warriors, bless their quick wits, caught on faster than gossip in a monastery and kicked off simultaneously, dodging space debris that came within a hair's breadth of turning them into very holy confetti.

"HAHAHA!" Ner'zhul cackled like a madman while painting the floor red with his own blood.

A coward who feared death more than a vampire fears sunrise? Of course he had a plan B tucked away like a ace up a cheater's sleeve.

The Dark Portal was his insurance policy, his get-out-of-jail-free card.

Sure, the Dark Portal had about as much personality as a brick wall, but Ner'zhul had been craftier than a fox in a henhouse. He'd stuffed the portal full of soul fragments ripped from his victims like a twisted Christmas stocking, letting him puppet the thing from halfway across the cosmos. Even from a thousand leagues away, he could make it dance to his tune like a warlock's summoning circle.

The only flies in Ner'zhul's ointment were Duke hitting harder than a siege engine and his complete failure to summon so much as a angry imp.

Ner'zhul laughed until his throat was raw, but inside, his heart had gone colder than a winter night in Northrend: These Alliance champions weren't just tough cookies—they were the whole damn bakery, and the Horde was choking on the crumbs.

Ner'zhul's body started fading like morning mist, three heartbeats away from vanishing completely.

Then, faster than lightning striking twice, Duke's teleportation flash blazed to life right in the orc's ugly face.

Where two paladins had been sent flying, now stood Duke in his blue and white wizard robes, looking about as peaceful as a storm cloud.

If Duke was still pretending to be a proper spellcaster at this point, then he was the kind of mage who preferred settling arguments with his fists rather than his scrolls.

Thanks to his magical crystal ball of an AI system, Duke could see every piece of space junk spinning through the void like he was reading a shopping list. Then, swift as a striking viper, he lunged forward and drove Ti'tahk's Time Steps straight into Ner'zhul's gut!

The forked black spearhead, wicked as a devil's pitchfork, punched through Ner'zhul's already ghostly belly like it was made of morning fog, and then—opened fire like the Fourth of July!

Under normal circumstances, those hundreds of arcane missiles pouring from Duke's staff would have had about as much chance of hitting Ner'zhul as a blind archer in a thunderstorm. The orc was already one foot out the door, fading from this dimension faster than a guilty conscience.

Any other wizard would've been left holding the bag.

Antonidas? Not a prayer.

Anasterian? Not in a million years.

Maybe Medivh could've pulled it off back in his heyday, but that ship had sailed and sunk deeper than buried treasure.

Ner'zhul's luck had run out drier than a desert well—he'd tangled with Duke, who was stranger than a two-headed coin.

Duke didn't pack the world-shattering punch of a meteor or command magic purer than mountain spring water, but when it came to finesse and surgical precision, he was sharper than a master craftsman's finest blade.

The Dark Portal was dumber than a box of rocks. It just followed orders from those soul fragments like a loyal hound, teleporting whatever fit the dimensional recipe.

Teleportation was all about knowing where you started and where you wanted to end up. Mess with either coordinate, and you might find yourself scattered across the void like seeds in a windstorm or ground up in a space crack like grain in a mill.

Duke couldn't stop a legendary artifact like the Dark Portal from doing its thing, but that didn't mean he was out of tricks. All he had to do was sweet-talk Karazhan into tweaking the local space coordinates just a smidge.

Picture this: you're expecting to dial 10086, but I slip you 9527 instead. You're going to be more confused than a cat in a dog house.

To teleport someone completely takes more scanning than a suspicious customs officer. The portal had to map every inch of a body hundreds of times per second, or else what came out the other side would look like something a butcher's apprentice had accidents with.

That delicate process? Duke threw a wrench into it the size of a siege engine.

It looked like a simple magical missile barrage, but each shot carried scrambled spatial coordinates like a message written in gibberish. He was making the Dark Portal as confused as a compass in a lightning storm.

"AHHH! What in the nine hells did you do!? No! NO! NOOOO—" Ner'zhul shrieked like a banshee, but the Dark Portal had already put on the brakes for his own safety, stopping the teleportation faster than a horse spooked by thunder.

As everyone watched with jaws hanging open like barn doors, the space storm calmed down, and Ner'zhul's body snapped back to solid reality like a rubber band.

"No, no, NO! Dark Portal, you worthless pile of stone! Get me out of here this instant!" Ner'zhul kept hollering at the portal through his soul fragments like a man shouting at a broken wagon wheel.

But in a place like Karazhan, where space was more unstable than a house of cards in a hurricane, teleporting was about as reliable as weather predictions.

According to Duke's magical intelligence network, back on Draenor the warlocks Ner'zhul had left behind were scrambling around like headless chickens, trying to start up another summoning ritual to reel their boss back in. But with Duke making Karazhan dance to his tune and shifting coordinates like a shell game, Ner'zhul could only flop around on the cold stone floor like a fish that had jumped out of its barrel.

Meanwhile, those two massive nightmare beasts that Ner'zhul had summoned earlier? Without their master's will to keep them in line, the Saint of Chastity and the curator had chopped them up like firewood.

Everyone crowded around to see how Duke would deal with the Horde's third warchief like spectators at a prize fight.

Duke snapped his fingers with a flourish, and ghostly mirrors appeared beside everyone—magical communication at its finest.

Alliance leaders who'd been pacing holes in their floors waiting for news from Karazhan—whether they were stationed in Nethergarde, Redridge Fortress, Dalaran, the royal city of Lordaeron, or the palaces scattered across the kingdoms—all let out sighs of relief deeper than mountain valleys when they saw Ner'zhul twitching on the ground like a dying mongrel.

"HAHAHA! Victory is ours! I knew Duke would come through like sunrise after the darkest night!" Anduin Lothar threw his fists skyward like he was trying to punch the clouds.

"Magnificent work, Duke!" In the Redridge Mountains, King Llane leaped up higher than a startled deer.

"Well, I'll be damned to the seven hells, my pride's taken a beating!" In Dalaran, Antonidas rubbed his red face like he'd been slapped by reality itself.

"Duke strikes again..." In Lordaeron, Terenas felt more mixed up than a soup made from random leftovers.

The kings across the realm had their own flavors of reaction, sure as snowflakes are different. But at the Watchtower, where brave souls stood guard against the Horde's endless hunger, the entire Alliance army erupted in cheers louder than thunder rolling across mountain peaks!

"LONG LIVE SAINT EDMUND DUKE!"

"HAHAHA! That's another Warchief down for the count!"

"I knew Lord Edmund wouldn't let us down—not in a hundred years!"

Duke's name had become more sacred than Sunday prayers, passed from soldier to soldier like precious gold.

Fighting the Horde again had left even the bravest warriors with butterflies in their stomachs bigger than dinner plates. But when word spread faster than wildfire that Duke had knocked another Horde chieftain flat on his back, it filled every Alliance warrior's heart with confidence stronger than castle walls—absolute certainty that the Alliance would stand victorious when the final bell tolled.