The light in Algernon's eyes went out, leaving nothing but utter desolation.
Drawn along by the beam, he rose helplessly toward the dark hatch beneath the fortress, just like the other three subdued legendary powerhouses.
The more than three hundred thousand soldiers of the border legion below fell utterly silent.
Watching their commander and their strongest protectors being swept away as easily as lambs led to slaughter, their morale collapsed.
The clatter of weapons falling to the ground rang out one after another.
At first, there were only a few scattered sounds.
Then it spread like a plague, until the noises merged into a cacophony of metal striking the ground.
The soldiers stood in a daze or sank to their knees, all thoughts of fighting gone.
The Black-Winged Tyrant stood on the platform at the main keep's entrance, her molten-gold slit pupils fixed on everything unfolding below.
Her dragon claws dug deep into the obsidian floor, leaving several deep gouges.
The sight of the Acid Lake freezing and then being leveled in an instant, along with the four legendary powerhouses being captured without even mounting a proper resistance, replayed over and over in her mind.
Once, this very legion and Algernon had used their steady war of attrition to grind down the fighting spirit of her army of hundreds of thousands of followers, little by little.
They had also surrounded her Blackwing Fortress so tightly that she had been forced to swallow her pride and seek cooperation with that cunning green dragon, Orgrimmar.
She had regarded this legion as a grave threat and Algernon as her most troublesome opponent.
Yet now, this powerful enemy who had left her overwhelmed and inflicted heavy losses on her forces was not even worth a second glance from Zong Shen.
The supposed elite border