A writhing tide of undead corpses surged from the putrid shores of Lake Lordamere, their bone-rattling war cries echoing across the battlefield. But these mindless servants of the Lich King might as well have charged headfirst into a meat grinder operated by particularly vindictive butchers. The Scarlet Crusade's formation held firm, and the undead found themselves stumbling into Duke's delightfully sadistic web of traps.
The first line of defense consisted of what Duke fondly called "holy rake surprise parties" - spiked contraptions that would have made even the most masochistic farmer weep with joy. Each rake bore bottles of blessed holy water at the end of its handle, ready to splash divine retribution upon any rotting fool stupid enough to step forward. For living humans, it was merely sanctified bath water. For the undead, it was liquid agony that ate through their putrid flesh faster than a starving ghoul at a fresh corpse buffet.
Behind these delightful instruments of purification lurked the triggered flame traps - mechanical monstrosities that belched forth gouts of purifying fire the moment an undead toe touched their pressure plates. The flames roared with such ferocity that nearby skeletons simply crumbled into bone meal, their calcium-rich remains destined to fertilize the battleground.
But Duke's masterpiece was the catapult artillery loaded with ceramic oil tanks filled with divinely blessed kerosene. The moment these projectiles shattered against the Scourge ranks, the blessed oil would ignite into a holy inferno that spread with the enthusiasm of gossip in a tavern. The undead found themselves transformed into shuffling torches, their bone-dry corpses providing excellent kindling for the blessed flames.
The summer winds of Dalaran blew mercilessly from west to east, turning the battlefield into a furnace of divine retribution. Unless Arthas possessed the godlike power to vacuum all oxygen from the atmosphere or command the very winds themselves, his endless hordes would continue to march straight into this blazing hell. They came by the thousands, and by the thousands they burned.
Standing at the formation's spearpoint was Duke's pride and joy - the FFF Regiment's flamethrower battalion, their weapons primed and ready to dispense liquid salvation. After a decade of relentless refinement, Duke had finally created his dream instruments of purification.
The first type was the portable flamethrower - a backpack-mounted tank that allowed individual soldiers to become walking dispensers of holy fire. Though limited in range, these warriors could cleanse corruption with the personal touch that only handheld immolation could provide.
The second marvel was the steam-powered flamethrower tank, a mechanical beast that could lumber across the battlefield while spewing jets of blessed flame fifty meters in any direction. These iron monsters were the undead's worst nightmare - mobile crematoriums that turned the battlefield into a divine barbecue.
Duke's cruelty knew no bounds. The oil he employed had been blessed by priests and refined through Holy Light itself. Since oil floats on water, extinguishing these flames required sand - specifically sand soaked with dark magic, a commodity rather scarce on most battlefields. The undead could choose between burning to ash or drowning in blessed fire. Either way, they were thoroughly screwed.
Mograine gazed nervously at the partially frozen lake, his weathered face creased with worry. "Duke, what if Arthas unleashes Frostmourne's power to freeze our entire army solid?"
Duke's dismissive wave could have swatted a fly. "If a single sword could freeze an entire city, we might as well tie nooses around our necks and join the Scourge's dance troupe ourselves."
Both Mograine and Abendis stared at him as if he'd just claimed dragons were actually oversized chickens.
Duke's eyes glinted with dangerous knowledge. "I have a theory about that cursed blade. Frostmourne may be a weapon of unimaginable power, but it's far from omnipotent."
"What do you know of Frostmourne's source of power?" Mograine pressed.
"Simple mathematics of suffering," Duke replied with grim satisfaction. "The blade feeds on souls writhing in pain and despair. To unleash power beyond mortal comprehension, Frostmourne must gorge itself on at least a million tormented souls. But from what I can observe, the blade appears rather... undernourished."
What Duke witnessed was the result of his system AI's detailed analysis. Even from this distance, the scan revealed that Frostmourne's power had diminished significantly since the first Battle of Dalaran.
Duke remained unaware of Arthas's recent confrontation with Uther, instead speculating that the cursed blade had expended enormous dark energy healing its wielder's wounds. The sword was running on empty, and its master was about to discover the price of overextension.
Duke hadn't even deployed his mage battalions yet - his flamethrower corps alone was reducing the Scourge to smoldering bone fragments. This casual annihilation was driving Arthas into a frothing rage that would have impressed even the most temperamental demon lord.
Meanwhile, the mage towers that had once served as Dalaran's defensive network were now Duke's personal artillery pieces, still under his iron control.
The bombardment between opposing towers unleashed elemental chaos that would have made the Old Gods applaud. Violent magical energies clashed and merged, creating a catastrophic maelstrom that turned the entire city into nature's angriest blender.
Everything within Dalaran's walls was pulverized into component atoms. Rows of ordinary houses, stripped of their magical protections, disintegrated under the elemental assault. Walls and roofs exploded into fragments smaller than confetti, scattered by the howling energy storm that had transformed the once-proud city into a magical tornado of destruction.
Any surviving mages or apprentices who might have been cowering in cellars were now thoroughly deceased - either properly dead or converted into half-assembled undead abominations missing crucial body parts.
When any mage tower finally succumbed to enemy bombardment, it would detonate with such spectacular violence that nearby observers would be temporarily blinded by the sheer magnificence of the explosion. The resulting inferno would consume everything in its path with the enthusiasm of a pyromaniac at a fireworks factory.
The bone dragons attempting to claw their way up from underground tunnels found their resurrection somewhat premature. Before they could even unfold their skeletal wings, thunderous explosions reduced them to calcium powder scattered across the battlefield.
Every mage tower faced the same grim fate - those under enemy control would explode when overwhelmed, while those about to fall back into Antonidas's hands would self-destruct rather than serve the Scourge.
When a mage tower packed with centuries of accumulated magical power finally detonated, the resulting blast would crater the earth for over a hundred meters in every direction. Everything within that radius would be vaporized so thoroughly that even their component atoms would file for early retirement. Not even the mighty bone dragons could withstand such apocalyptic fury.
The shockwaves hurled building-sized chunks of debris through the air, creating a lethal hailstorm that pummeled the surrounding undead ranks. If these corpses still possessed the capacity for pain, their screams would have shattered windows in neighboring kingdoms.
Arthas, his patience finally snapping under the pressure of watching his army get systematically cremated, lashed out through the soul connection that bound him to his undead lieutenant. "ANTONIDAS! WHAT IN THE NINE HELLS ARE YOU DOING?!"
The psychic agony sent the Archlich's withered form convulsing into a tight ball of suffering.
"Forgive me, my master!" Antonidas wheezed through the soul-searing pain. "Edmund Duke is a tactical genius wrapped in pure malevolence! He cracked the magical keys of over half of Dalaran's mage towers at speeds that would make seasoned cryptomancers weep with envy, then reset every single one. When we attempt to regain control, we discover he's rewritten the access codes and rigged the towers to self-destruct the moment we try to force entry!"
Duke was demolishing Dalaran with the casual efficiency of a man clearing weeds from his garden. Rather than allow the Scourge to claim these magical fortifications, he'd converted them into the world's most expensive bombs.
Through Antonidas's pain-wracked explanation, Arthas finally grasped the magnitude of Duke's tactical brilliance. Each mage tower possessed unique magical keys, and while the Speaker could coordinate their combined firepower, such coordination required the individual tower owners' consent.
The problem was that Duke, during his brief possession of Antonidas's body, had exploited the Speaker's coordination authority to systematically crack nearly seventy percent of the towers' magical keys.
Under normal circumstances, breaking these enchanted locks was certainly possible, but the process typically consumed days or weeks of intensive spellwork for each individual tower.
What Arthas couldn't have anticipated was Duke's possession of a system AI capable of miraculous feats of digital sorcery. By inputting personal details - birth dates, preferences, embarrassing childhood memories - the system could test thousands of password combinations per second using what Duke cheerfully called the "try every damn possibility" method.
The undead were learning a harsh lesson about the intersection of magic and technology, and the tuition was paid in thoroughly incinerated bone fragments.