Who a King Must Do Ch. 15

"Remember, men, women, you are not allowed to die," Anduin told his gathered forces. His talk to the military personal was much more professional than the throwing of insults, inside jokes and innuendos over at the adventurer's side. A slight bit of jealousy rushed through the High King as he saw Aclysia smile at the apparent leader of their group. It seemed purely platonic, so he shoves that aside and dealt with his own speech again.

"I will not be returning with slutless masters, studless mistresses, guideless slaves or make widows of any variety. Even though we face one of Azeroth's most ancient dangers today, I need all of you to understand that order: you are not allowed to die!"

""Yes, your majesty!"" the soldier's roared in unity, their slaves saluting. It had been a while since Anduin had seen a sentinel formation in full gear. Even though their leather equipment was more sexually teasing than one would expecting of military garb, their weapons, large three-bladed glaives, always returning to the one who threw them, made the sentinel formation nothing to laugh at. Next to them stood the elite of Stormwind guards, in full plate, armed with a longsword and large shields painted in blue, with the head of the lion at the centre in gold.

Next to them the adventurers came to an end of their own speech. "And if one of you maggots keeps standing in the fire, don't expect Jimmy to heal you!"

"Yeah, I need my mana to save people with an ounce of common sense!" A clearly annoyed shaman agreed. The adventurers had one last laugh. Then began the attack on Uldir.

It was truly a place rotting with danger. The first step was easy enough, as they broke through the village surrounding the large titan facility. The golden pyramid was humming with some technology not even gnomes could hope to understand yet. Usually, they were gleaming in a steady state of meticulous cleanliness. The fact that this one only looked dulled despite the deeply disgusting biome it was placed in said a lot.

Rather than run over the large bridge that connected the blood troll village with the flat top of the pyramid, they quickly slid and jumped down a relatively steep piece of earth that lead to one of the three corners of the facility. A rouge had scouted out the area in advance and was now leading them to what he had found to be the best route inside.

At the very least he was right in the sense that it was much better inside than it was outside. Although compromised, many of the facilities systems were still operating, including the air circulation. The vile white and red mushrooms Anduin had spied rotting underneath the facility were not spreading too much inside there. Although it was only a question of time until the freed Old God would change that.

Their first challenges were two corrupted titan constructs. One guided a large elevator that lead them into the facility proper, hidden underground. Glowing with the red of the so called blood god, it was clear that this unit was unsalvageable, and so the adventurer's disposed of it. It wasn't a particularly gruelling fight, although the infected liquids it spluttered from its malfunctioning form made it hard to navigate through the rooms the fight took them, starting at the top elevator room, continuing on a lengthy ride downwards (that involved laserbeams for some reason that only the titan creators knew about) and ending at the room at the bottom.

Next was a unit that self-designated as MOTHER. The fight with her was much trickier, as she fled from one containment chamber to the next and forced the group to follow her, causing damaging energies to rush over them and creating additional enemies every time. They had to go through three chambers before MOTHER suddenly declared them all sanitized. From that point onward, she was no longer their enemy but their guide.

According to her, they had to defeat three enemies that were blockading access to the central chamber from opening.

Up first was a putrid abomination that was akin to a hydra, but only in appearance. While large and disgusting, especially since they had to fight it in the garbage heap that birthed it, it was defeated without a hitch. Next was a similarly abhorrent being birthed from infected blood, a creature that the facility itself had birthed on accident, according to MOTHER, and whose seals had been broken along with G'huuns.

Who, as MOTHER opened up to them, was also not a true Old God, but rather an accidentally created one. Anduin was relieved to hear this. Although the information that the titans, the acclaimed good and wise gods of the universe, had accidentally created a monstrosity was unnerving, knowing that they weren't facing a proper Old God in all their cunning and all their power was easing on the nerves.

The last enemy on the triumvirate was a herald of N'zoth, a mixture of bug, crab and faceless called Zek'voz. A powerful minion of the mysterious fourth Old God, the most of which Anduin knew about was the fact that he rested somewhere under the waves, he assaulted them with visions and minions of not only his own master but C'thun and Yogg'saron as well.

It was the hardest fight up to that point by far. The pair of Anduin and Xal'atath proved invaluable against the herald, as the High King provided not only massive blessings to his party but could also differentiate between the true enemies and mere fiction. Even as the arena they fought in began to shrink from the dark energies that pooled everywhere, nobody lost hope thanks to the golden bubble of light the royal cast over them. The voidborne creature finally submitted its life, but not without whispering. 'Soon... boy king...' as if something greatly amused it, 'you will find your seat... or be forced in it...'

'What a petty little creature,' Xal'atath sounded just as amused, 'telling one last lie before he perishes.'

'You were of great help there,' Anduin told the blade mentally as the group took a break. Those who weren't hurt had to thank the healers in the group, who really needed to take a breather and refill their mana reserves. Without the blade working with him, identifying the illusions would have been much harder. She also shared with him a spell that let him dispel those false enemies for everyone else as well. Without her, that fight would have claimed at least a few lives. Instead, their group was still unharmed. 'Thank you.'

'Don't thank me yet, your majesty,' the sweet tone of the Blade of the Black Empire whispered in his mind, gently caressing it. 'This adventure isn't over yet.'

She was right, once they were done here he could thank her all they wanted. For now, they needed to survive.

The central hall was now open to them and gave rise to a surprising target amidst a disturbing blood storm, the prophet Zul of Zandalar. His presence here, in a clearly undead state no less, put the burning of Stormwind at his hands in perspective. 'At least one sin I don't have to lay directly at Sylvanas' feet,' Anduin thought. It was still partly her fault, since it were her orders that broke that man out of prison.

Even his odd state of undeath, brought about not by necromancy but by forceful clinging to life through means of blood and void, was extremely susceptible to the cleansing power of the light. With a paladin of Anduin's calibre around, he was thus quickly reduced to ash, crying every step of the way that he had seen himself life forever, not end like this.

Their victory over the prophet was short-lived, as the ground opened under their feet. They dropped from the surrounding of dull gold into a vault affected by the rot of G'huun, deeply and truly. Ironically, it was that same rot that stopped their falls deadliness, the thick layer of decaying material and mushrooms cushioning the fall.

Only for a giant clawed pincer to descend on their position. The two guards on the point of impact raised their shields protectively, not only for themselves but also for the rogue with them. Larger than the two men put together, the pincer was miraculously stopped by the might of Stormwind, although cracking sounds made it clear that the men's arms and legs paid the price.

A giant even amongst C'thraxxi, the elite generals of the faceless and the physically strongest being amongst the Old Gods troops, loomed over them. Mythrax the Unraveller, servant of G'huun and a being that had reduced Vol'dun into a desert and laid waste to Zandalar in its quest to destroy the seals holding back its creator, screamed out its opposition.

It was a horrible fight. The dark magics of the creature reverberated in the spores that filled the air, making it impossible to avoid all of it. Every attack that hit not only dealt large amounts of damage but also sucked the life right out of them. The spores exited their bodies filled to the brim and settled on the ground as orbs of shadow. Desperately, many of the group ran towards these orbs when they felt themselves close to death.

Although it was less than they lost, it still allowed them to restore some of their loft lifeforce.

Eventually, even that behemoth fell. It was Aclysia who dealt the finishing blow. While both of Mythrax' pincers were bound by shackles and roots of arcane, light, void and the elements, the demon hunter leapt into the air on wings of fel. Her metamorphosis fuelled her already considerable strength and she crashed with her blades first at the top of the faceless' head. The damage to its neck didn't kill the monster outright, but remaining bound, it helpless when Aclysia flew into the air again. On the second impact, she ripped Mythrax' head off.

Now it was only G'huun that was left, according to MOTHER as her voice accompanied them. Her body was apparently too big to fit into the festered tunnels. Something Anduin could personally attest to as the all crawled through the putrid, spore-ridden mist.

"Alert: in the containment chamber, you will find two currently deactivated security consoles," the muffled, mechanic voice reached them through overgrown speakers in the walls. "To activate, carry orbs of light into the consoles. This will activate the Re-Origination Beam, reducing everything in the chamber to cinders."

"Let's not use that then," the leader of the adventurer's stated.

"It may prove necessary," Anduin pointed out. "For the good of Azeroth, today we might perish."

The leader rolled his eyes, "Look, no disrespect your majesty, but you need to take the joke. I almost perished for Azeroth like 20 times in the last 10 years."

"Like that one time we beat Nefarian," the priest of the group pointed out.

"Motherfucker broke my bow," a hunter growled. "What an ass that guy was."

"Remember Kil'Jaeden?" the rogue spat out.

"First or second time?" the leader made yet another joke.

"First."

"Wow, what a nightmare that guy was, especially since we didn't exactly have time to recuperate after that damn N'aru turned Voidlord."

"On behalf of my kind, I apologize for that," Aclysia stated.

"Don't sweat it," a fellow blood elf, a male paladin, dismissed that, "...but, really, I much preferred fighting at the Sunwell over fighting the Lich King. At least I wasn't freezing my ass off there."

"True that," it was met with pretty universal approval.

Anduin hadn't even realized there were adventurers that had seen so many of the world's threats over the years. No wonder they knew how to coordinate against all of the immensely powerful enemies, they were veterans of a hundred battles.

"There was no worse encounter we had than the battle against Gul'dan though, I tell you," the warrior amongst them, who hadn't raised his voice at all until then. "I can handle warlocks and demons, but having to beat up a warlock that turns more and more into a demon only to then fight some semi-possessed Illidan - not fun."

"Truth, brother," the leader agreed and then their chatter stopped as they entered the containment chamber. The titan construction were barely visible anymore under all the mushrooms and writhing tentacles, many of which turned their eyes towards the group.

"This is hands down the most disgusting place yet though," the leader grumbled, looking around. The two light orbs sat at the beginning of some kind of ramp, covered in unnatural pustules. "Even the plague-research area of Icecrown citadel was more hygienic than this. Even the walls have mouths."

What he meant was a circular, man-sized hole in the back wall of the chamber, breathing steam and spores from its spike-toothed orifice. 'Guess that makes this G'huun then,' Anduin thought, setting his eyes on a giant of mushrooms and infected blood that stood amongst the tentacles. The humanoid figure started moving a moment later, charging at the group.

"READY OR NOT, HERE WE GO!" the leader screamed and the party dispersed. The number one rule of Old God combat apparently was 'take care off the tentacles' while a standard rule for fighting large enemies was 'don't clump together' to ward of large area attacks' effectiveness.

Anduin attracted the monster's attention with a quick blast of light fired from Shalamayne. Wielding both the blade of his father and Xal'atath at the same time, Anduin blocked the attack of the voidborne monster with shields of Light and Shadow. Short term barriers of magic that blocked the impacts. It was a trick he picked up rather quickly, since the Shield was a basic spell in the arsenal of every priest. Using the Shadow as an alternative powersource for a similar effect was easy once he got the hang of the differences.

Still, he needed to restore his power every now and again. That was when Aclysia tagged in for him, forcing the abomination's attention on her by throwing one of her blades at its head. It dealt only shallow damage, the white hide was thick, but it was enough to cause its birdbrain to look elsewhere. 'Truly just an artificial Old God,' Anduin thought, a proper one wouldn't tunnel-vision like that.

Sentinels, guards and adventurers hacked away at the tentacles, threw glaives, arrows and spells at them and nimbly dodged the returns. Those who did get hit had their wounds healed almost immediately, shaman and priest always ready to react.

Soon there were no more tentacles and then everybody concentrated on the large central figure. Battered with spells and with swords hacking away at its feet, the monstrosity soon lost its footing. Once in the ground, everyone engaged in the unheroic task of climbing on top of it and stabbing whatever gap they could find.

From throws of rage, to weak struggling, to finally laying still, the abomination died a final death. "Whew," the leader wiped off his forehead. "That was surprisingly easy. Didn't even do the Old God thing and tried to take over our mi-"

As if he was challenging fate, that was when a voice entered everyone's heads at once. It sounded like someone was gargling pus and then regurgitating it right into their ears. People were fighting the instincts to drop their weapons and hold close their ears. 'My whispers will liquify your mind.'

Looking for a source, Anduin's eyes wandered to the mouth in the wall, which suddenly retracted. A mass of boneless white flesh pushed out of the hole, squishing its entire being through a hole that was much too small. Like a giant slug, G'huun spilled onto the battlefield.

The slimy creature was clearly a mistake of nature. No matter how alien or freakish the Old Gods looked like, there was no way any of them would have chosen an appearance this downright disgusting. At least a third of the Old Gods mass must have been its belly. The organ was exposed along its belly and front, while the overstretched membrane only dulled the colour under white. On its back wiggled bumps and protrusions like maggots. The circular mouth they had mistaken for part of the wall earlier sat in an eyeless head with a set of mandibles and a flat, vertical horn.

'Everyone will suffer my pestilence!' G'huun announced, its belly liquefying and allowing the attached mouth to reach out to an absurd degree. The massive teeth clashed against a hastily erected barrier, broke clean through and ripped the swordarm off one the Stormwind soldiers.

One of the sentinel's, doubtlessly the hurt man's slave, roared in anger and threw her weapon. It struck and burrowed itself inside the Old God, the enchantment causing it to return. Her mistake was to catch it. The moment the weapon was back in her hand, the blood that stuck to it suddenly came alive and climbed onto her arm drilling under her nails to the sound of her disgusted, panicked screaming.

'Yes... that tingle of fear in your spine... that is where I exist...' the Old Gods amused voice caused headaches to everyone who heard it, but they had to fight even against the madness it tried to beset on their minds. Anduin threw strong healing spells both towards the sentinel and the soldier. He couldn't regrow an arm, but the wound needed to be closed. Much to his relief, the Light purged the Old God's blood and pacified it.

The adventurer's engaged G'huun a moment later. It became apparent after a minute or so spent on trying to damage the hive of disgust that it was without hope. They couldn't engage it in melee without fear of either its corrupted blood getting on them or being crushed under the multiple tons of slug-monster it represented. Ranged weaponry proved to be only slightly effective and even then, then mana it took to offset G'huun's blood held no candle to its natural healing capability. Any glaive, arrow or fireball caused only a wound that was gone moments later.

There was no other choice, they had to use the Re-Origination Beam. That was the conclusion everyone in the room came too independently. The quickest members of the party, Aclysia and the rouge, immediately began moving. Grabbing the golden orbs that hovered above their stations by some titanite designs they didn't get, they started moving.

'A worthless effort, the maggots shall feast on your marrow,' G'huun bellowed inside everyone's mind as he shook. Grey batches of a stinking liquid scattered from its back and flew all over the room. Who they hit began to vomit immediately, first stomach acid, then blood, at the same time as the flesh at the impact site liquified. Healing was thrown out as quickly as possible.

Neither the rouge nor Aclysia were hit by any of these attacks. The white-haired demon hunter jumped, her felfire turning the ground, slippery from whatever unholy liquid the pustules were oozing, somewhat workable. Enough for the next leap anyway. On fleet feet, the rouge was almost more impressive, simply weaving through with inhuman reflexes and not even minding the difficulty of the terrain.

They both slammed the golden orbs into the consoles at the same time and the mechanic voice of MOTHER echoed in the chamber. "Initiating Re-Origination in 5 seconds. 5," everyone converged on the same spot in the chamber. Aclysia and rouge were the only ones not around. "4," the demon hunter leaped down from the plateau. "3," the rouge was sprinting as fast as he could. "2," G'huun retracted its mouth to strike once more.

Gathered as they were, the Old God was sure it could get a meal or two. "1," in perfect coordination, the rouge and the demon hunter had met on the same spot. Aclysia transformed into her demonic form, beating her wings and carrying the rouge into the air with her. Her timing couldn't have been better as she stomped down the extending mouth of the so-called blood god. "0." Aclysia landed behind Anduin the moment a blasting light descended from the ceiling.

The adventurers were fully expecting MOTHER's threat to be true and that they would have to die there for the good of Azeroth. That didn't mean they would just roll over and die, however. Everyone capable of magic lent their power to erect a massive barrier around all of them. Anduin was at the head of the effort, standing with both blades raised as the Re-Origination Beam washed over them.