Disclaimer: Let this stand for the whole fic, I do not own World of Warcraft. The lovely people at Blizzard entertainment do, and I loathe the thought of their resources going toward a lawsuit rather than new character models.

A/N: This is the sequel to Burning Legion. While I am hopefully decent enough at integrating recap and new material that you won't need to read that fic to understand what's going on in this one, you still might wanna read that one first. Just to see how it all started.

Also, if you like my work here, I would like to point out that I have a book that has just come out that might be up your alley, Tales of Mysdrym: Ancients Stir. For more information on it, check out my profile.

…-….

When the Burning Legion swept across my world, obliterating countless lives and even blotting out the sun with dark, thick clouds, I was seventeen.

Before they came, I cared about clothes and celebrities and what my best friend Bethany thought about the latest episode of Vampire Diaries. I was a B student, and I didn't do any sports. I was the kind of face that just became a part of the crowd as soon as I stepped into it. People didn't expect me to give speeches or do anything so spectacular with my life that I'd be remembered for generations to come. I was fine with that, though. I was normal. Average.

And I loved every minute of it.

But then I… I'm still not sure why I did it, but I decided to get help. I crossed worlds, was chased by demons, and had my hopes crushed over and over and over.

In Azeroth, I made friends with heroes and villains alike, and we found a path back to my world, to earth. We fought against impossible odds, and we won.

Well, kind of.

I mean, there's still demons and stuff. But things are getting better!

Sort of.

Maybe a little.

Not really.

As the demons' numbers dwindle, I've found that the old hatreds and biases and greed that's always plagued humanity has found our situation comfortable enough to rear their heads.

I'm twenty now. It seems like such a short time, but so much has happened. I think I say that a lot, but it's pretty much true every time.

You see, the Legion, when they came, set up their base near the north pole. From there, they worked their way down, tearing through the northern hemisphere. They'd cloaked themselves with some sort of magic so that we couldn't see them, and it was like ghosts descending on towns, wiping them off the map before anyone could even get word to others. At first. I guess that attack strategy must have worked in other worlds, but they didn't consider how hard it would be to eradicate the bigger cities. Or maybe they wanted us to know they were coming. Those things are called demons for a reason. They act the part.

In the end, though, they underestimated our ability to survive. They didn't realize that there would be people who would give their lives so that the rest of us could live. They underestimated our ability to learn.

This guy in Germany, for example, figured out that you could see the demons if you used infrared goggles. He managed to post it to youtube before he was killed. I never encountered any succubi, but I guess they were a large part of the force that overtook Asia? Well, this South Korean woman figured out that if you could drown out their voices, they were basically just any other crazy with a whip. And hooves. And…well, they were a lot easier to kill when you weren't frikkin' enthralled by them. She sacrificed herself so that her kids could get away and spread the word. Their names are going down in history as heroes, now.

While their discoveries did help humanity as a whole, in the end…

Officially—with a few small exceptions—the northern hemisphere has become a dead zone, a wasteland. There used to be one hundred and ninety something countries in our world. Officially, there's less than fifty now. Most of them are in South America and southern Africa. Places the demons hadn't reached yet.

Some people are saying that until we can completely repel the demons and do a thorough sweep, no countries should be written off.

The people thinking along those lines, however, are becoming fewer and fewer as their opposition grows stronger. I'm not saying the other side is bad, because I know things are rarely black and white, but they want to redraw the map. It's like a new age of discovery. For them, they don't see why the majority of the human population should be confined to less than half of the landmass of our world. It makes sense; it does.

And I think in an ideal world, it wouldn't be so bad if they did redraw the maps.

I mean, with the spells from Azeroth, there's no such thing as language barriers anymore, so it's not like the conquering people would have to teach any stragglers or holdouts of survivors their language. Just cast a spell, and they can argue all they want.

The problem is really dumb, if you think about it. Humans are territorial. For example, I'll use the U.S., since that's where I'm from. Our population, pre-Burning Legion was over three hundred million or something. Now people are guessing there might be five hundred thousand of us left, scattered across the continent.

And that's the optimistic view.

That's a lot of land that's not being used. That's a lot of space that could be restored, cultivated, used to keep the rest of the world going. I don't think people have a problem with that part. What they have a problem with is what it's gonna be called.

Why do we even need countries at all? We're all people. We're all fighting the Legion, fighting to survive. Why can't we just be humans?

I doubt I'll ever get real answers to questions like that, but in the end, people are starting to squabble over what places will be called. Over which governments get to control them. The U.S. isn't alone, either. All the survivors of countries who fell are now having to face other people coming in and claiming their corners of the world for others.

Territorial disputes have broken out in former Texas and Egypt, which is actually a forefront of the fight against the demons. It's a 'quest hub' in the wasteland, if you will. There's a few others like it—New York City proved to be as durable as all those end of the world movies always portrayed it to be—and so far people have been mostly tiptoeing around what's going to happen with them. After all, you don't say 'fuck you' to the people leading the assaults against the monsters threatening to destroy you.

Sorry for the cursing, I do try not to, but, well, the people I'm around tend to swear a lot.

Not an excuse, but still.

Back to the dismal. Smaller countries are trying to expand their territories, and then the bigger countries that are left are trying to make sure they stay bigger than the smaller ones. It's…we're fighting each other instead of the real enemy. Over land. Land that belonged to people who were murdered horribly.

Like I said, skirmishes have started, but the one place that hasn't had any trouble, that hasn't had any overzealous explorers marching out and planting flags, is Russia. My friend, Vsevolod, V for short, is a mage from Russia, and he says that when people do get there, they're gonna find a thriving society. He says there's nothing that can hold them down, but at the end of the day, I know he's worried.

He and a few others tried to lead a reconnaissance team into Russia two years ago, right after we'd killed the big bad running things in our world. They weren't able to get very far, and none of the ones who made it back ever talk about it. It's known as one of the remaining demonic strongholds, like the ones in Sweden/Norway, Greenland, and Alaska.

Oh, on a lighter note: Finland and Canada survived.

Yeah. Dunno how exactly, what with the demons plowing through them, but they're still there—they're the official exceptions that I was talking about earlier and the reason some people wanna wait to redraw the maps, because maybe we'll come through and places like Andorra or Macedonia or something are hanging in as well.

Regardless of how, those two countries have developed a rep for being serious bad asses.

Bad asses who are, at least in the Canadians' instance, surprisingly polite. Unless you're a demon.

Anyway. So we're starting to have problems with people stepping on other people's toes in regards to territories.

I wish I could say that was the extent of our issues.

It's not.

The allies I got us in Azeroth are starting to fight among themselves, too. Well, I guess that's deceptive. They've always been fighting. But it was getting better. And then it got worse.

And then it got way worse.

Like, they've had skirmishes and all out blood baths in our world. We've been trying to maintain that Earth is neutral territory, but, well…

It's not.

Not anymore. People are beginning to choose sides—Horde or Alliance. Most countries that had to dig their nails in to hold on to a vestige of their former lives prefer the Horde. Those guys are a Victory or Death bunch, and that's the attitude we need to reclaim our homes.

Countries who didn't go toe to toe with infernals and felguards tend to prefer the Alliance. It's not that they suck in a fight or anything—some of the best fighters I know are Alliance—but they're more tactful? That's not the right word…

Hmm….how do I explain it? The Alliance focuses more on relief and repairs. The Horde tends to be fight, fight, fight, move on when there's nothing left to kill. The Alliance helps defend and rebuild.

I'm not saying either faction is always that way, but yeah.

And there's been some pretty bad stuff going on in Azeroth. Like, genocidal stuff.

The Horde's leader, Garrosh Hellscream, went crazy. Some rumors say he figured that it was only a matter of time before all of Earth sided with the Alliance and wiped the Horde from the maps—I don't think we'd do that, but who knows at this point—so he took measures to make sure the playing field would be even.

Out here, it's hard to say if that's the real reason. I mean, rumors get twisted and I've found that humans are kinda arrogant overall. We always think things are about us. Maybe Mr. Hellscream's plans was in the works before my world came into the picture.

Regardless, he did some pretty awful stuff. So some heroes thwarted his schemes and took him to trial. And he escaped. I don't know the details, really. I've been a bit busy with my own world.

But everyone's pissed off. Like some Alliance blame the Horde, saying they helped him since he was their leader? Though, after what he did to his own allies, the Horde is pretty mad he got away, too.

He fled to some trippy time warp place and people are saying he escaped into the past.

I'd say good riddance, if not for the fact that he could alter the present if he changes the past. If he rewrites Azeroth's history, what will happen to my world?