End of the world

How long has it been?

Days?

It seems like months.

Attacking, falling back to the trees, eventually retreating. Each step back they make, a step forward for the enemy.

And now there they stay, on the verge of despair, all defenses failing...

Arthas has discovered their little base, hidden within the woodland. The scourge pours on them from all sides, wreaking chaos and destruction.

Ghouls, skeletons, huge abominations, leaking yellow, sickly fluids. Necromancers that keep yelling in a foul language and throwing curses at them. Clouds of disease spreading over the handful of defenders, the Ranger General among them, that still valiantly fight to keep at bay the oncoming waves..

Niniel, her brow now creased with worry and bitter despair, as she shoots arrow after arrow, each one of them reaching its target.Yet, the enemy's numbers seem to increase, with every passing second.

And then Sylvanas falls.

They all sense it, even if they're not close enough to see what is going on. Fear clenches his stomach, every muscle now tensed, threatening to break, like the string on Niniel's bow, which keeps vibrating.

He's only steps away, at the edge of the forest. The expression on Arthas' face as he raises Frostmourne upon Sylvanas' already numb body.

"Finish it" she defies him, gritting her teeth to stave off the screams of pain. "I deserve... a clean death."

She does. They all do. But Arthas smiles cruelly and puts away the runeblade, while his left hand raises in summoning upon her. And then the words, words he can hear, because he's so close now...

"After all you've put me through, woman, the last thing I'll give you is
the peace of death."

Sylvanas screams. She screams in frustration and suffering for what it seems like an eternity. Then something happens, as her body falls back, limp and there's a laughter, a shrieking sound, which makes them all want to cover their ears.

There's a moment of madness. As he pushes back a ghoul, trying to get at him, with a bolt of holy light, he sees how Niniel drops her bow and takes out her dagger.

He's too far to stop her.

She runs towards the place where Sylvanas has fallen, with a desperate battle cry. But she does not reach Arthas, as twenty other creatures get to her and she stumbles, while abominations lash at her with their chains. Blood gushing out of so many wounds as she falls in the lush grass, only to be trampled under the feet of the enemy...she lets out a scream of agony, as one of the beasts tears her chest open and pins her to the ground, straightly through her heart.

Then it is silence. The world had stopped spinning.

Tears run down his face as he calls out her name, his voice lost in the horrifying sound of the slaughter. He dashes forward to the place where she lies, but there's a hand on his shoulder that stops him and pulls him back. The Ranger fights him as he can no longer think, through the veil of sheer madness that covers his mind.

" Let me die..."

Breathing is pain. Living is pain. End it now.

" Just let me die..."

But the man still holds his arm, preventing him from running out in the open.

And then he understands that if they all die, there will be no one left to properly bury the dead. Prevent the necromancers from raising them, when they'll show up, after the battle, like carrion birds, searching for the lest damaged bodies to turn them into minions of the Scourge.

The men seizes his arm tighter and pulls him away, into the forest, far from the cries and the now ruined camp. They run almost blindly, without any sense of purpose, just to get away.

Pain threatens to suffocate him, as he stumbles through the trees, blinking at the tears that cloud his vision.

"Niniel"...