Who a King Must Do Ch. 26

Stoneard fell within two days. Anduin and the void elves arrived at night and clad in spells of darkness in the murky swamp, they surrounded the fortress unseen. Then purple spellwork lit up the night as the entire perimeter turned into one large summoning circle, led by Xal'atath herself. Void Walkers soon spilled out of tears in reality. Drops of non-existence whose simple need to feed on whatever material essences they could was easily manipulated into servitude.

They crashed again and again on the wooden walls of the orc outpost. Within minutes, they had multiple breaches in the walls. Primitive fortifications like this had no chance where even more advanced walls would have bowed to the eliminating scratches. Bow and arrow did very little to stem the tide of voidborne.

Axe and sword were a bit more effective. The void walkers that spilled through the breaches were met with good old orc battle hunger. Still, the Alliance forces could have won right there, were it not for Xal'atath wanting to take this opportunity to teach her master how to conduct this ritual himself.

Summoning was the school of magic that Anduin, even in matters of Light, had always had the least amount of talent had. Ancient wisdom of the Old Goddess filling his mind and the raw amount of power he possessed did balance this disadvantage, however. By the noon of the next day, he and Xal'atath together succeeded in pulling a Voidwraith into this world.

Much taller than the average Void Walker, with thin limbs and a purely black body the sapped the light from the surroundings in a dark vortex around it, the Voidwraith advanced on Stoneard, broke through the still standing gate like it was made from paper and soon thereafter the Horde forces were made to surrender.

Disarmed, they were put under the watch of the void elves and sent to the Alliance fortress close to the remains of the Sunken Temple, the Marshtide Watch. They would be kept as prisoners of war there. Meanwhile, Anduin and his bodyguards hastened south.

The air quickly turned from moist to hot and dry as they entered the Blasted Lands. The red rocks dominated the desert landscape. That this was supposed to have been a lush forest, an uncorrupted extension of the Swamp of Sorrows, before Anduin's birth, he could hardly believe it.

He found Nethergarde Keep to only house a small garrison. Anduin found this surprising. Sure, the Horde had been forced out of the area a while ago, only a small remain holed up in Dreadmaul Hold. They were so insignificant that they didn't even dare to enact any harassment on supply lines like Stonard and Grom'Gol had.

That garrison was immensely surprised to see their High King arrive. Apparently they had intended to send a messenger just the next day. Medivh's warning had indeed been true, the Dark Portal was stirring. The true might of the garrison had moved to meet whoever would come out of the trans-dimensional gate right at their point of entrance.

On the back of their griffons, Anduin, his men and their Sentinel slaves joined the main forces when they had just begun putting up camp. "High King," the leading marshal saluted before his monarch, the well-practiced motion coming naturally despite his surprise upon seeing Anduin enter the barely raised tent. "I did not anticipate you coming so soon, we..."

"I am already in the know," Anduin softly interrupted the man with a charismatic smile. "Be at ease, marshal, I am here to announce my arrival only. You have acted in the right ways, from all I can see, but I must make my own investigations."

A year ago, the marshal now would have begun giving Anduin a list of unasked advisements, wanting to protect the young, inexperienced monarch. However, since the marshal had heard the news and there was a slave house in Nethergarde that had recently seen the addition of a few dwarves and gnomes for the garrison to have their fun with, the military man had no unneeded tips to share. All evidence pointed towards the High King being a much more capable man than anyone else around.

"If you need anything, my forces are yours," was all the marshal stated before leaving Anduin to conduct his business.

Anduin left the tent to inspect the portal itself. He had seen its variations. Always the massive stone gate, two humanoid statues standing guard at the sides, with a snake curving on the top, its grey body coiled in the shape of an infinity sign.

What had differed over time had been the colour that the dimensional tear within its otherwise empty frame had taken. A black view of the cosmos when the portal had lain dormant, but not dead, then tinged green when it once more connected to Outland, the shattered remains of the original Draenor, then a brown tone when the orcs of the Iron Horde had spilled out of it. Now it had a golden tone and echoed noises that faintly reminded Anduin of the hymn of the Naaru.

Xal'atath hissed in his mind. 'Sickening purity,' she spat out and the High King had to agree. His sensibility towards things of the Light was majorly below that of the Old Goddess, but even he could feel that this was wrong. Something so dominated by the Light, so pure, was not meant to exist.

Testing, he stretched a hand out towards the portal. Although he felt a tingle around his hand as it sunk through, it stayed firmly within this world. This was a mere flare, the portal had not properly been opened and Anduin wasn't sure if it would stay for long either. If he just left, the problem would undo itself.

'Atha, what happens to worlds where the Light wins?' Anduin asked a question he had never wondered about until this point. If the Old Gods won and got what they wanted in service of their masters from the Dark Beyond, then they would turn a planet into an endless writhing of maddened life, fighting itself for the amusement of the voidborne. He knew that much and it appalled him. Endless agony for life out of bounds.

'The Light consumes every last bit of life on a planet,' the Old Goddess opened the truth to him. 'Encapsulating everything in its disgusting radiance. The whole world will shine with the Light, covered in golden crystals that keep everyone in their oh-so-blessed state of perfection. Perfect, if you want to call it that, lifeless, unmoving and completely calm. No emotions remain. Only a crystallized rock tumbling through space.'

Hearing this made Anduin's hairs stand on end. To think that every single priest and paladin out there had unknowingly supported yet another apocalypse veiled as a paradise... 'Truly there is no one path to follow. Everything must be taken in moderation,' he thought and bundled his magical power. "I order all of you wait for my return," he suddenly informed his bodyguard.

Although shocked and wanting to protest, the entire king's guard simply saluted as one, trusting in their leader's wisdom. They watched Anduin take a single step forwards, the gold of the portal intensifying for one moment as the High King's might fuelled the tear in space and time. He only had enough knowledge and power to bring himself through.

For a moment, it felt like he was falling. Nothing was around him. No light, no air to breathe, no ground to tread on. Then all of that came back as suddenly as it had left and he found himself in the Tanaan Jungle. His journey to Draenor, the one split in its path towards becoming Outland by the timeline changing events by Garrosh Hellscream, had been successful.

He had only ever heard from Khadgar of this place. Marks of a massive Legion invasion should have blighted these lands with rivers of green fel lava and the black rock that came along with it. Instead, all Anduin saw was a peaceful forest.

He stood underneath a ruined portal. Much larger than the version on Azeroth, but collapsed. Indeed, what he had stepped out of was nothing more than fragments of the fallen lintel having connected to the one still standing pillar in a roughly door shaped fashion. Only that this part of the world already suffered from a damaged veil made it possible that something this random could function as a portal.

Still, a power source would have been necessary, one that Anduin found in a crystalline being of raw holy power descending from the air. It blazed with radiance and a constant melody surrounded it, as if the cobalt being's presence had to be constantly hailed by the world itself. Many symmetrically aligned crystals rotated on their own around the lightforged entity's core.

"Naaru," Xal'atath manifested and growled at the being.

"Not any Naaru, enemy of the cosmos," it responded in a female voice.

"The one true enemy is you. Life should run rampant, not freeze in a state of perceived perfection."

The melody got a disharmonious twist to it as the Naaru heard this heresy. "Your opinion is as unwanted as your kind as a whole, voidspawn."

"How about you take wherever you oversized wind chime have your ass and-"

"Enough!" Anduin interrupted, the bickering between those two was not something he needed. "Honoured Naaru, while I don't agree wholly with my wife," the song itself just stopped when the Naaru heard that particular word in reference to an Old God, "neither do I agree with this crystalline freezing of life. You seem to have waited for me despite this, I want to know why and who I am talking to."

"My name is K'ara," the Naaru responded. "I did not intend to summon you, at least not you specifically, whoever you are. I intended to summon the greatest champion of the Light from your world to this one, so you may help the High Exarch in her perfection of this one." The song suddenly raised in hostility. "But given your impunity, I evidently failed! Someone calling this wretched abomination a wife could never be a champion of the Light!"

Before Anduin could even respond that nobody was going to talk about his wives like that but himself, a ray of golden energy already descended from the Naaru's core and engulfed both of them. Xal'atath clicked her tongue as mild pain washed over her. Her connection to Anduin and her regular exposure to the Light, acceptance of it in many ways, had made her much more resilient to its damaging effects than an Old God had any right to.

The High King himself felt absolutely nothing. He recognized this spell. A very basic one, meant to inflict immense degrees of pain and damage based on the weight of the target's sins. Anduin had committed no sins to the Light and was thus untouched by the Naaru's strict demands on him. Instead, he easefully took hold of the spell and changed it.

Rather than try to punish him, the beam now granted Anduin clarity. It filled his mind with the events that had transpired since the defeat of Archimode on these very grounds. A long time of co-existence followed. With pride, the High King followed as the noble draenei found it in their heart to forgive the aggressors of the Iron Horde, now under the new name of the Mag'har (the uncorrupted), but still under the leadership of Grommash Hellscream.

Years passed as the two sides cooperated to drive out the remains of the Burning Legion. Blighted Lands cured by the draenei while the orcs fought to reclaim what was lost.

Anduin was shocked to see that, in the two years that had passed since the invasion of Iron Horde on Azeroth, twenty years had passed on this side of the portal. Not as shocked as K'ara was as she realized what was going on and attempted to stop the spell. Of course, High King wanted to know everything and so he forced the spell to go on.

All he had to do so was change the spell even more, mixing the energies of the Shadow into it to create a pull. This would somewhat taint the Naaru, but Anduin had already come to the conclusion that these seemingly benevolent beings were only playing the long game. It would perhaps serve it well to somewhat 'corrupt' its strait-laced conviction to eternalize life in a perfect state.

Together with his magic, he sent over visions of his own. Who he was himself, what he had come to realize, his entire life story. While the Naaru was stunned by the flood of images, Anduin concentrated back on what he himself learned.

A few weeks ago, the last Legion outpost had been destroyed. Now without common enemy, the Mag'har and draenei were quickly separating in their alliance. Through K'ara, the leader of the draenei had been advised to bring this entire world to the Light. A High Exarch named Yrel. A summit today would be the day where the draenei would begin their own crusade.

The Mag'har were hopelessly outmatched. Without the element of surprise or demon blood, orcs had little to raise against the technological and magical supremacy of the draenei. Especially after they had 20 years to recover. To absolutely assure that their first strike would be the greatest one, K'ara had nevertheless attempted to get in contact with the Army of the Light. Which had, by raw accident, alerted Medivh and ultimately brought the High King to this world.

Anduin realized what he had to do. His convictions were worth nothing if he didn't save this world like he planned with his own. Those draenei needed to be stopped, just like he would stop all of this unnecessary conflict on Azeroth. That last flash of knowledge ended the forcefully upheld spell.

Xal'atath couldn't help but snicker. "This is perhaps the third happiest moment of my life," she confessed as she watched an utterly confused Naaru hang limpy in the air, moved only slightly by a gust, turning it into an actual wind chime.

"Which would the first two be?" Anduin asked, leaving K'ara a moment to gather herself from all these revelations she had just had.

"My impregnation and marking, followed by our wedding," Xal'atath responded with a debauched smile.

"I don't... understand..." doubt rung out from the Naaru. The clear tone of her voice, like bells of glass ringing, was compromised as she found herself confronted with ideas that her ligthforged nature should not have entertained. "A... middle path? Between Shadow and Light? I should be turning into a voidspawn right now, tainted by your darkness and yet all I feel is... greater. Urges reveal themselves to me that I never knew..."

Anduin wondered if he had perhaps gone a bit too far on the memory sharing front. Subjecting a Naaru, whose bodies were genderless no matter how feminine their voice was, to the concentrated ecstasy that had been the last few months of Anduin's life, may have been a bit too much on the entity's consciousness.

"Honourable K'ara," the High King rose his voice. "Do you not see now that the way of the Light, while noble in its ambition, is just as punishing for us mortals as the way of the Shadow?"

"I see it but... no, I cannot just accept this, the prime Naaru would not... my mother would not..." the Naaru hesitated for a long while before ultimately gathering her presence once more. "I must see for myself, Anduin, that those memories were not just yarn spun to fool me. Show your essence to me, so that I may judge for myself."

"As you wish," Anduin agreed and raised both of his hands. "But if it is my true essence you wish to feel, it may bring you even closer to the Shadow." It was a warning that was well appropriate as both forces of creation flowed equally out of his palms and conjoined in a perfect sphere between his hands. Hostile energies that harmonized perfectly under his command.

"Magnificient," K'ara and Xal'atath both whispered at the same time, despite the latter having seen this many time before. The crystal entity slowly lowered itself, then a short golden tendril extended from its bright core and connected with Anduin's summoned essence. Dark purple begin running up its length. "Such... power... such grace... All of this ecstasy and yet... the nobility is clear, your goals are clear. No overbearing chaos, no tyrannical order only... peace... Despite all of this Shadow your Light blazes brighter than even Xe'ra's. I... I... submit to you."

Those four words were followed by a massive amount of Shadow suddenly being absorbed the Naaru. An explosion of gold engulfed the landscape, blinding both Anduin and Xal'atath. It was no second attack, a lightforged of this level wouldn't ever go for treachery of this level anyway. Instead, Anduin was witness (and in most ways reason for) an event that had not yet happened in creation.

A Naaru using the power of the Shadow to reshape its own body.

The golden light dimmed and Anduin looked upon a beautiful woman. Having spent much of her life in the company of draenei, K'ara had herself taken the shape of one of those humanoids. As tall as Anduin, the blue-skinned woman had a pair of short horns of the same colour, curving slightly backwards but growing straight for the most part. Immensely long and fine, her blonde hair fell down to her hips like a tide of liquid gold. This part of her reminded Anduin of both Aclysia and Vareesa, mixture of both of their attributes.

K'ara's face was elegant and gorgeous to behold, dark blue, almost purple, lips under a fine nose. A pair of gold glowing eyes blinked as she looked down on herself. Unlike the two earlier mentioned elves, the Naaru was stacked, two breasts the size of Xal'atath's flowing into a narrow waist and wide hips, combining the best of all the women seen in the visions Anduin had sent her. Either by design of subconsciously, K'ara had picked herself a figure that would be most alluring to Anduin.

Dark blue nipples crowned the barely sacking bags, K'ara sighed when she touched them curiously. The first tone of lust she ever let out, something she could only feel now that she was a being at least made manifest in flesh.

Her Naaru origins were still clearly displayed on her skin. Golden markings, like tattoos, covered much of her body in disconnected, crystalline shapes. From the tips of her slender fingers, to the short tail above her juicy ass, down to the hooves her legs ended in, those marking were everywhere.

On one hand, Anduin found those feet a bit peculiar, on the other the way her legs were built made her ass look like she was permanently walking around with high-heels. While that was sexy in and of itself, what gave Anduin a raging hard-on was when K'ara reached down to her blueish, purple pussy lips.

Her hairless crotch already sported Anduin's mark. The black tendrils looked oddly fitting, despite the otherwise so holy radiance of her appearance. "I see your might, your righteousness, and I submit myself. I became flesh to please you, champion of Light and Shadow, my master," K'ara spread her pussy lips and a single drop of lovejuice fell down. "I don't know yet if this body is capable of bearing children but..."

All of this was very sudden. From the way he had been greeted to K'ara's submission to the truth. That she had no choice but to see that her kind's mission had been misguided from the start by Anduin's presence was one thing, the submission nevertheless sudden. Did Anduin care?

No, the High King rewarded his newest, self-branded slave by pushing her against the broad pillar of the portal he had come from. In the same motion, his lips sealed whatever further comments the fleshmade lightforged may have had. His hands explored her body and K'ara no longer needed to be informed as to why mortals didn't want to be stuck as eternalized crystals.

Her own touch had already felt interesting, good in many ways previously unknown to herself, but Anduin's caress was much beyond that. Their kiss sent tiny flashes through her mind, a myriad of small pleasures, causing her body to flush and become more sensitive towards his other motions. Hands glided over her skin, smooth even where her golden marks stretched, leaving tingling lines where his fingers had travelled.

Reaching her bosom, the High King greedily cupped those large breasts. They weighed heavy in his hands, the softness spilling between his fingers. Fondling them for a little bit, he soon paid more attention to the nipples, protruding as hard tips from the squishy bags of hopes and dreams. K'ara moaned into their kiss, her inexperienced tongue overpowered by his.