So I said I was done with WoW stories. It seems I lied. Here, have a one-shot about the Ordering of Azeroth!
I do not own Warcraft or its sequels. Blizzard does.
Eonar stood with the rest of The Pantheon in the Celestial Ark's observation room, smoothing out her robes. All around them, the Titans' flagship hummed with cosmic power and technology, and beyond them other Titans and the constructs they created went about their daily tasks, to maintain the Celestial Ark and prepare for another Ordering.
The observation room, dubbed the Eye of Eons by Aman'thul - she suspected a little reference to herself - was a hemispherical room located at the bottom of the Celestial Ark. Artificial gravity spells kept their feet rooted, and a dense mixture of heavy noble gasses, to allow verbal communication, filled the massive chamber. Eonar considered it massive, and knowing of how tall in stature her kind were to most of their creations, she took a moment to reflect on how gargantuan the Eye of Eons would seem to a mortal...
They had taken some inspiration from the pacifistic Naaru in the layout of the Eye. Purple and pink crystals lined the perimeter of the Eye, shimmering with electric signals and communicating with the engines. Far above was a painted ceiling of the Titan Homeworld, Odin, with all its metallic grays and golds. Shimmering, rainbow-colored runes lined the floor in intricate, circular layouts, and in the middle of the Eye was a large glass window, a circular 'hole' that looked down upon the next world to order, planet TR-A235NB-653560721.
The world had a heavy atmosphere of hydrogen and helium, with a quarter oxygen. Its land masses were disgusting conglomerates of black stone, gray fungus, and orange lava. Mountains and canyons criss-crossed the planet like a hammer had been struck to the world. The churning seas were unfathomably deep, and the atmosphere was choked with water vapor, obscuring much of the planet below with enormous hurricanes. The world's magic was not bound in leylines, and instead saturated the entire world in irregular clumps. All of that chaos was due to the obvious sources clinging to the planet.
The dark civilizations clinging to life on the planet worshiped the five of them as gods, and perhaps they weren't wrong to do so. Each one of them - they had no names for them - was the size of a small continent. They were enormous, betentacled beings, their body structures subtly differing from one another but sharing several things. All of them had a central 'head'. Some had bilateral symmetry, some had radial symmetry. One had no symmetry at all. One had seven heads. One had an abundance of eyes. One had no eyes at all, and instead a plethora of twitching maws. One was the tan color of sand, another was a sickly blue-green, yet another was dark purple. Another was black and white. The last was a pale white.
Elementals, at the creatures' behest, ran rampant throughout the world, unchained from the elemental plane that corresponded to the planet. Horrible, faceless monsters served as the quintet's personal armies.
It made Eonar feel sick.
Next to her stood her lover and superior, Aman'thul. The Highfather looked thoughtful, as usual, staring down at TR-A235NB-653560721. His staff crackled with lightning, as opposed to Eonar's, which flowed with plants and crawled with fungi. To her right was Norgannon, his arcane disk shimmering with runes. Eonar noticed that he'd set them to Destruction runes, so while the Dreamweaver's face remained impassive she could tell he was angry.
Then there was Khaz'goroth, his bronze skin glowing with the heat of his rage, his hammer's inscriptions boiling the noble gasses around them into a frenzy. Across from Eonar stood her son, Golganneth, lightning streaming from his eyes. She could never tell what he was thinking, and that made her feel like less of a mother. It was just as well; when they gathered like this they were not mother and son, but fellow members of The Pantheon.
Just as she stood to Aman'thul's right, so too did Aggramar stand to his left. Eonar's glowing, garnet eyes stung whenever she looked at him; she saw far, far too much of her fallen brother-in-law in the bronze-skinned Aggramar the Avenger.
"We are in accord, then?" Aman'thul asked at length, his wispy voice echoing around the Eye of Eons.
"The plan is sound," Golganneth said bellowed. "I shall send orders to the Construct's Guild to deploy their armies at this location." As he said that, a holographic ping seemed to appear on the planet below, on one of its shores. "Test the waters, so to speak."
"Are we certain - " Norgannon said, his voice almost as elderly and patriarchal as Aman'thul's. " - that that tan god is the one we should focus on first? The dark purple one's armies are weakened by far, and preliminary analysis suggest the tan god relies more on physical combat than the dark purple one."
That, of course, wasn't to say the tan god didn't use psychological tactics. All five of them did. Even floating so far above the planet, the Pantheon could hear faint whispers from down below, too quiet to make out but foreboding in their intent.
"It's best to get it out of the way now," she said. "If we do not, then it may lend aid to its fellow gods at the most inopportune time. We will strike hard and fast before it can figure out we are striking."
"Assuming, of course - " Aman'thul said. " - that they are unaware of our intentions. In which case we may have a surprise when we translocate to the surface."
"What does it matter?" Aggramar asked. "Whether they know we're coming or not, the tan one is still the one most dangerous to us. Like Golganneth said, the plan is sound. Let's go and kill a god!"
His enthusiasm was contagious. A god. They were going to kill a god. Despite what their created races oft thought of them, the Titans were not gods. Close, surely, but not quite there. Eonar would take great pleasure in fighting the dark deities down below, and even greater pleasure in ensuring they would never take another life ever again.
"Then let's go." She raised her staff above her head and began twirling it. Arcane energy showered down from it, engulfing her form. The other Titans performed similar actions, Golganneth also sending a signal to the other Titans to begin the assault on TR-A235NB-653560721.
A giant, clawed tentacle lashed at Eonar, forcing her to weave to the side. Golganneth scorched its skin with a blast of lightning, but the black mark he left healed over quickly. She pointed her staff at him, sending healing magics to weld his injuries back together, then raised her staff into the air. A hundred green orbs flew out from its crooked head, impacting the god's writhing flesh and sprouting into flower-like lashers. Another giant tentacle, with a violet eye on its end, turned its gaze on one of the flowers.
No you don't, she thought. She sprinted over to it and grasped the tentacle just below its eye, forcing it to look up. The narrow beam of emerald light flew up into the red skies. Her lashers assaulted the god's skin, opening thin gashes with their thorns that bled black blood. Golganneth channeled electricity and thunder into the gashes, and for his troubles, was rewarded with a heave of the god's skin that sent him to his knees, and a claw tentacle trying to impale him.
All around her, wherever Eonar looked, were tentacles. The sky above her had been replaced with the ground as the god tried to shake them off, but gravity spells kept them adhered to its continent-sized body. Far into the distance, farther than even her eyes could see, the body stretched. Her feet trampled destroyed tentacles that, even as she watched, were rapidly regenerating and twitching. Claw tentacles battered her, eye tentacles blasted her, and smaller versions of the two poked and prodded her shins and mind. Tentacles that went up to her stomach had mouths, complete with razor sharp fangs, and they tried to drill into her.
Everything had gone wrong mere moments after they teleported in. The idea had been to arrive at the god's head and blast it to pieces before it could retaliate, but they had horribly underestimated its power. Its head repelled all but the most powerful of attacks with ease, and the sheer quantity of tentacles separated them in moments. The enormous eye on top of the god's crown-like head hadn't helped matters, knocking them around with dark glares.
The god had driven them away from its head, their teleportation spells not working properly, so now she and Golganneth - she didn't know where the others were, since some dark ancient power was blocking her radio transmissions to them - were alone against the writhing claws and eyes. Each tentacle would be a match for a lesser Titan, and provided a notable challenge for Eonar, but with so many it was a wonder they were still in the fight. The planet had rotated once by now, and they still fought.
'Your cause is hopeless...' And then there were the whispers. The horrible, nagging whispers of a monotone, uncaring, apathetic voice that came every few seconds, telling her to give up, that she would die, that her allies would betray her, minute after minute for hours on end.
Eonar and Golganneth had, however, dug in their heels and refused to be driven farther from the god's head. It and its giant eye loomed just out of sight, but Eonar believed that they were getting closer.
Shadow and lightning, sickness and life, flew around in endless volleys. The tentacles kept healing, almost too fast for them to keep up. Eonar and Golganneth were driven back to back, their lashers and storm constructs blasting thorns and chain lightnings at the smaller tentacles that ringed them. A fanged tentacle rose up and slammed into Eonar's stomach, leaving deep gashes in her green-tinted bronze skin. She fell down with a gasp, grabbing it and trying to force it away. Her staff clattered out of her hands, and tentacles whisked it away.
Golganneth appeared and, with a thunderclap of a punch, knocked away the tentacle and helped her to her feet. She gave a nod of thanks and cast a massive rejuvenation spell, healing the marks both of them had gathered. A recall spell summoned her staff back to her fist, which she used to point at an eye tentacle and unleash a blast of pollen. The yellow cloud clung to the limb, and a stray lightning bolt from her son set the tentacle ablaze.
To her regret, the flames didn't spread, and the tentacle gazed at one of her lashers. Eonar gasped and tried to stop the spell, knowing from past experience what it would do, but she was too late.
The green laser beam ricocheted between their combined minions, blasting them to pieces with seemingly no effort. With each jump the beam grew thicker and darker, until it lanced into Golganneth, knocking him down, and then lastly into Eonar, blasting her back into a claw tentacle with a hole burnt clean through her body.
Gasping in pain, she summoned a shield of vines around herself and healed the wound, a surprisingly difficult venture, and then dispelled the shield to heal Golganneth.
More tentacles closed around them, including the claw tentacle Eonar had been forced to use as support. They continued the battle.
'You are already dead.'
Then, much to their surprise, there was the familiar flash of a blink spell that revealed Aggramar. His sword, the top half broken off, flashed and a claw tentacle fell to the ground, the deep gash already turning shallow. "There you two are!" he bellowed. "The others have regrouped at the monster's head, come!"
"You figured out how to teleport?" she asked, even as arcane light engulfed the three of them.
"Sure did! Now look alive!" They reappeared where they had before, standing before the multi-mouthed, multi-eyed head of the god. Feeler tentacles extended from its body, wiggling through the air. The giant eye, larger than its head itself, turned around seamlessly with a dark green barrier around itself for protection. The rest of the Pantheon was there, fighting off the tentacles. Aman'thul and Norgannon teleported around haphazardly, launching arcane and frost spells of untold power left and right to try and keep the tentacles at bay. Khaz'goroth swung his massive hammer around, sending globules of lava flying through the air as he did. The sky was the sky once again, since this close to the god's head they were upright. One of its eyes looked at her.
They continued fighting. Eonar used fewer of her offensive spells and more and more defensive spells, as was her skill, to heal and ward her fellow Titans. Sickly green lances of energy surged through the air left and right, and the colossal eye maintained a deadly beam of shadow magic, which the god tried to throw them into repeatedly. And still, its head resisted all damage.
'You are weak.' It maws opened, and a putrid, invisible gas spewed out in a roar. A spark ignited it, engulfing all of them in flame. Eonar released multiple chain heals in response.
Khaz'goroth seemed to get an idea. When another fang-filled tentacle launched itself at him, he told her to entangle it. She did, pointing her staff at the tentacle and channeling roots from its crook, wrapping around the tentacle and keeping it in place. Khaz'goroth, each step burning into the god's flesh, stuck his hammer into the maw to keep it open and, with a roar, sent gauntlets of flame down its maw. The tentacle shrieked and tried to pull away, but Eonar held it in place until her fellow Titan ended the attack.
The god seemed to lurch. The shield protecting its eye disintegrated and the head turned from tan to necrotic purple, as did most of its flesh. Tentacles fell down limply and stopped attacking.
Eonar's eyes widened, and then she grinned. The monster would be put down.
The head, about as tall as either one of them, rolled its eyes and twitched its maws weakly. They blasted it with spells of death, leaving grievous burns and Aggramar pierced it with his sword to carve gaping wounds in its head.
'H-How did you...?' it asked, before falling limp. They crashed downwards as the dark god stopped supporting its own weight. Once it landed, the six of them regrouped and Eonar allowed her passive regenerative aura to mend their wounds in place of expending more of her mana.
Aggramar laughed boisterously. "One down!" He held up his sword, stained with black blood, and it flashed with spellfire. A moment later, it was clean.
Aman'thul placed his staff's edge into the god and rested both hands on top of the lightning-bolt shaped rod. "Indeed. We should study this, it may offer insight into the combat capabilities of the others. We'll form a complex around this area and investigate its... unique biology."
The rest of them nodded in agreement. Eonar hesitated for a moment, looking closely at the head of the deceased god. For a brief moment, she thought she saw a spark of life within it. For a moment she thought it was simply feigning death. Then she decided she was being paranoid; they were Titans. None stood before their fury. "Agreed," she said. And they teleported away.
The gods proved more difficult to destroy than they anticipated. Their insectoid, elemental, and faceless armies were a near match for their own, but their numbers seemed to be without limit. And the remaining gods - 'Old Gods' as their servants called them - were reluctant to separate. It had taken all members of the Pantheon to kill just one of the Old Gods, and then again to take the black and white one by surprise. While their size made helping each other difficult, they stood no chance at killing any of the other Old Gods. Not the same way, at least.
The war waged on for years. The Titans drew up metals to replenish their armies, but the Old Gods' armies were without end. However, study of the first Old God provided interesting insights into their biology.
Due to the nature of free magic on TR-A235NB-653560721, something's size contributed to its magical power. It was likely how the Old Gods had gotten so powerful; they started out smaller, but added mass to themselves and grew stronger, which made it easier to add mass to themselves, on and on. They also found out, through interrogating captured enemies, that the Old Gods had names. The one they had slain was known as C'thun, the black and white one was Y'shaarj. The pale white Old God was known as Tsa'thannon, the dark purple one was N'zoth, and the blue-green one was Yogg-Saron.
It was Yogg-Saron that roused Eonar's rage the most. The self-titled Old God of Death. Needless to say, the Lifebinder was infuriated by such a travesty. Her pride as the Titaness of Life - and the ongoing whispers of You don't need them probably had a hand in it as well - led her to strike out on her own.
She walked through the Celestial Ark, to a deployment station. The ship hung high above the planet in the vacuum of space, so after the deployment station sealed itself off and cycled out the air to another compartment, it opened up and Eonar dropped.
Titans needed no air, so she had no trouble at all plummeting through the vacuum towards her target, the continent-sized mass of writhing tentacles that was Yogg-Saron. Satellite reports had described it in greater detail; its body was not only covered in tentacles, but also in alternating flesh, hardened plates, greenish pustules that carried some sort of gas, and twitching, fanged maws that were just wide enough to swallow one of Eonar's legs. Unlike all the other Old Gods, Yogg-Saron had no eyes at all.
But despite the lack of eyes, as Eonar's body screamed through the atmosphere as a meteor, superheated air battering her Life Shield spell, aimed right at its head, she had no doubt it could see her clearly. It was almost ironic what she was going to do; Life would kill Death.
She aimed for its head, the bilaterally symmetrical head covered in twitching mouths, pustules, and plates that was looking right up at her. Yogg-Saron's body, from the head down, was snake-like. The snake-like body was covered in tentacles of various size as well as all the other implements the Old God wielded, close to two kilometers long. From there it split into thick tendrils reaching outwards in all directions, some connected together with 'bridges', multiplying and splitting off into the distance, all writhing with maws and tentacles.
The Old Gods seemed to like tentacles.
Eonar summoned a spell to invoke all of nature's wrath in her scepter, aiming it at Yogg-Saron's face. It looked up at her, its primary, gaping maw seeming almost to smile. The shimmering yellow ball of energy grew larger and larger in her scepter's crook, and then Eonar dismissed her Life Shield so it wouldn't get in the way shortly before launching the ball at Yogg-Saron.
It traced out ahead of her, fast as light and, to her horror, Yogg-Saron simply swallowed it. It closed its mouth, then opened it again and spat a tiny purple ball to the side.
Unthinkable! To so casually resist the power of life itself! Eonar was stunned. So stunned, that she didn't notice Yogg-Saron move its head to the side, an action which made her impact the coiling length of its neck, right onto an armored plate.
She recovered quickly, standing up and summoning hundreds of lashers all around Yogg-Saron, but before they could so much as swing a pulse went through the air, and a wave of black-and-purple smoke washed over her vision. When it faded Eonar found herself collapsed on Yogg-Saron's body, and the lashers she'd summoned had had all the life extinguished from them. When she focused on herself, Eonar realized she herself was aching from the blast Yogg-Saron released. Her staff had fallen down, down into the coiling depths of the Old God as it clung to the mountain side.
Before she could recover from the death spell, one of the thickest and tallest of Yogg-Saron's tentacles, with a spiked club at its end, coiled around her waist. She screamed indignantly and fired balls of wrathful electricity in all directions. The tentacle tightened in what seemed like anger, bending her metallic skin with painful creaks. It coiled further, placing lengths of blue-green flesh over her chest and constricting like a viper. Her hands were still free, but the tentacle began to radiate a terrible green mist that she couldn't help but inhale. The squattest of Yogg-Saron's tentacles, barely a fraction of Eonar's size, launched hundreds of bolts of shadowy mist.
Terrible apathy and weakness, like nothing she had ever felt before, settled over her, and the world-shaking blasts of magic from her hands diminished into weak sparks, and then faded entirely as her power diminished into nothing. She tried to signal the Pantheon for aid, but her radio transmitters were shot.
Yogg-Saron curled its head over to her and opened it maw wide, giving Eonar a clear view as its throat vanished down its serpentine body. Air was inhaled, but Eonar saw streaks of light flowing off of her, and crushing fear settled over her as it literally inhaled her courage, then pulled back.
"You were a fool - " it said in a flowing, alluring male voice. Each word was a thunderclap, vibrating through her entire being and making it impossible to think of anything beside its words. " - to think you could challenge me on your own, Eonar." Her eyes widened. "Yes, I know your name." Its head had drawn back, but kept 'looking' at her.
Eonar struggled in the tentacle's grip, but all that got her was another tightening of its length around her. Resigning herself, she stared up at Yogg-Saron's face. "You have me at your mercy, fiend. Do your worst," she said resolutely.
Yogg-Saron growled lowly. "Titaness, I have no intention to kill you. At least, not now." She raised an eyebrow. "You see, despite you outsiders invading our world with no warning or attempts at negotiation, and your callous murders of C'thun and Y'shaarj - " It was one to talk about 'callous murder'. " - I am willing to be diplomatic with you, as are N'zoth and Tsa'thannon."
"There can be no diplomacy with fiends of the dark such as you," she growled as intimidatingly as she could. "We may not be able to kill you, yes we know of your new bonds with the earth, but we can ensure you have no influence over this world ever again."
"And why can there not?" it almost purred, sounding almost amused. Of course, Eonar only realized it sounded amused once it finished speaking, since during the actual sentence there was nothing in her mind but its words. Interrupting was not an option. "I see no reason why you should seal our influence away. Tell me, Titaness, what are we truly doing that is wrong?"
She took a moment to steel her nerves. "You truly must ask? You incite the elementals to war with each other, you create monsters for the sole purpose of killing each other. You keep the magic unchained, the ground heaves and trembles with your every movement. The surface shifts and quakes endlessly, unpredictably, and any life that arises that you do not approve of, you slaughter wholesale."
Yogg-Saron chuckled low in its throat, the sound so supremely wrong from such a leviathan. "The elementals already hate each other. They were at war long, long before we rose." It coiled the length of its neck above her around, placing its head behind her, speaking over her shoulder. "Let me tell you a little story, Eonar. Long ago, in the chaotic conditions of the world, deep in the seas, almost by chance a series of coiled chemicals came together. The magic of the world gave them awareness. They drifted into a relatively safe cave, that offered shelter from the elements due to its nonimportance. In there the billions of chemicals lived and died, adding molecules and power onto themselves by way of evolution."
"Five of these beings, as they grew larger and larger, came together into an alliance. Each had formed their bodies in such a way that they all had a strength to cancel out another's weakness. They consumed the rest of the spirals and, seeking to render themselves safe from the elementals that ruled the world, struck out and began consuming matter from the seas. They grew larger and larger, until they had the strength to bend the Elemental Lords to their will. But while they had been evolving themselves, the chaotic conditions of the world went from harmful, to ignorable, and then finally to beneficial. They thrived in it. To them, to us, chaos became as essential as food to the lesser beings you create. Our minions know not of our origins; as far as they are concerned we have always existed and always will. But this is the truth, and your order is as toxic to us as chaos would be to you."
"They are tolerable to you only," she protested. "All other life perishes in these conditions!"
"The Aqir do not seem to mind," it said. "You know about the Aqir; thanks to their combined efforts a couple of your kind died." Eonar growled. That was true; the insectoid beings the Old Gods ruled had terrible power, especially when backed by the Old Gods. The Titans numbered in the thousands, their armies even more, but no Titan had died in a long, long time. TR-A235NB-653560721 would be the first planet to take Titan lives.
"They tolerate them - " she ground out from the crushing weight of the tentacle constricting her. " - because you make them able to tolerate the conditions!"
Eonar felt something pierce her mind, effortlessly shattering her mental wards, then retract. "And how is that different from what you do, Eonar? You visit any world that does not fit your guideline of what worlds should be, based on what your world is. Then you remake them based on how you see fit, with life forms designed to tolerate the conditions you impose."
It knew about what they did. How did it - ?! "Do not act so surprised, Eonar," it said in what could almost be mistaken as a friendly tone of voice. "You are the Titaness of Life; you hold no power over, nor secrets from, death itself. And your little remark about slaughtering those we do not approve of? Quite true. Lesser beings have no place in our world, understand. However, I would like to remind you of the practice of reorigination."
Eonar pursed her lips. She'd never been an ardent supporter of the Reorigination Protocol, but she understood its necessity. If a world overtaken by chaos and evil were to develop spaceflight and spill over to other planets, the results would be catastrophic. Still, the overwhelming loss of life wrought by it made her heart ache. "That is different. We cleanse worlds tainted by evil to ensure they do not corrupt other worlds and contain it."
"Cleanse. Contain. Pretty words to disguise what you really do." It uncurled from behind her to look at her straight on. "What are your standards for reoriginating? Quite... lax, I say. Even if a third of a world does not fit your standards, instead of only wiping out that third, you remove it all, and then go through the time and effort of remaking the entire world, when the reasonable alternative would be to simply remove and remake that one third you deem unworthy. Am I wrong?"
Her first instinct was to think that no, it wasn't. Yogg-Saron's words made terrible, horrible sense to Eonar the Lifebinder. Reorigination was cleansing to those on the planet that were the problem, but to everyone else there was little dispute that it was murder. Mass murder. Her metal heart ached in her chest at the thought of all the trillions they had killed, all because some part of the world was broken. And was that in any way different from what the Old Gods did? No, it was worse. The Old Gods obviously favored the Aqir, but they didn't wipe out the Aqir just because a race of fish didn't meet their dark standards. How many worlds had Eonar's kin reoriginated? How many trillions were dead? She had more blood on her hands than Yogg-Saron...
Their dark standards, she realized. She narrowed her eyes and looked up at Yogg-Saron. "You think to try and turn me against my kind?" Wrathful nature magic crackled in her palms, but another few blasts of shadow weakened her again. Her anger did not fade. "You think to turn me down the same road of Sargeras, to bring death and despair to all? You are a fool if you thought I would not see through - "
Eonar could not interrupt Yogg-Saron but the deity-made-flesh could easily interrupt her. "Ah yes, Sargeras." It peered into her mind, she could feel it. "He is an... interesting one. The lord of demons and destroyer of worlds. He did strange work on Argus, I wonder why you did not reoriginate that world. Unless, perhaps... you fear him? Which is odd, because he is one and you are many. Or perhaps it is his infinite armies that give you pause?" Yogg-Saron made a low purring noise that Eonar interpreted as it being curious.
"My erstwhile brother was the champion of our kind before he fell to dark powers," Eonar explained. "He has only grown stronger in the presence of fel and flame; it is much more efficient to simply outpace his destruction with our creation, rather than challenge him head on in a long war of attrition." She narrowed her eyes. "You change the subject."
"My apologies," it said cordially. "No, I have no intention of turning you into a second Sargeras. While it would be advantageous in setting you against your allies and crippling their fighting power, while enhancing ours, no, I have no intention. Besides, while I enjoy slowly changing something, I know better than to underestimate your kind. But you saw before that, due to our differing roles, you are utterly unable to resist anything I do. Should I wish to drive you down the same road Sargeras did, or a similar one, I could crush your mind as easily as I could crush your body." The tentacle around her waist and chest squeezed for a moment to drive the point home. "I simply wish to negotiate a truce with your kind. You especially, Eonar; you intrigue me."
"I intrigue you," she said in disbelief. "A truce, between chaos and order."
"Why of course." It loomed closer and a long, thin tentacle reached up to stroke her cheek. She shuddered in revulsion and Yogg-Saron pulled away to face her again. "The Lifebinder, with a title like that how could you not catch the interest of the God of Death? You know, we are a lot alike, you and I."
"We are nothing alike," she spat out of instinct.
It reeled back, as if hurt, and then its face loomed closer, framed against the dark red sky. "Physically? Perhaps. But consider this. Life needs death, or nothing evolves and improves. Death needs life, or there is nothing to die. You change a world to your liking, we change a world to our liking. You create minions to keep it that way, I create minions to keep it that way. You set them to enjoy your conditions, I set them to enjoy my conditions. Our conditions are polar opposites, but if those who live in them are happy with them then who are you to say one is better than the other?"
The similarities were painful to hear. Even more painful to agree with. "Then what is this 'truce' you speak of, Yogg-Saron?" she asked, saying its name for the first time.
"Leave this world to our rule. Remove all traces of your presence and seek not to return. In return we shall, to alleviate your fears of our chaos 'spreading' to other worlds, ensure the races of this world never devise spaceflight; we will quarantine this world manually. All the infinite worlds in the universe would be yours save for this one. Furthermore, we would aid you with your little Dark Titan problem."
"Sargeras," she said. "What of him? With how he destroys all we create, I'd assume you would support him."
"Maybe we would," it agreed. "But I can remember his arguments with you, the point of view he set forth. He seeks not to just unmake all that you have ordered, but to destroy the entire universe. I do not realize if you've noticed this Eonar, but Tsa'thannon, N'zoth and I all live in the universe. There is a chance he'll pass us over. I'm not counting on it. You know how strong the Legion is; tell me, in the world you desire to create here, would they be stopped?"
She didn't like where this was going. "No, they wouldn't," she said. "The Legion is endless, and our creations would never be able to stand against Sargeras since he enjoys destroying worlds personally."
"Your creations could not, but we could. It takes your entire Pantheon to defeat one of us. Fear of us aiding each other is why you have not assaulted the remaining three of us. Sargeras, however, knows not of our power; you did not, after all. Eventually, he will come to this world, and like you did, he will underestimate us. He will send his armies, and ours will hold them back, since numbers are of no concern for us. Then he will come, and he will die." She sucked in a breath. For all he had done, Sargeras was still her brother. Yogg-Saron seemed to pick up on her unease. "Or, we simply revert him back to how he was. Either way the Burning Legion ceases to impede you. We retain the planet that is our home. You continue to order all other worlds with no concern of this one ever even potentially spreading to them."
Eonar frowned, but said nothing. However, Yogg-Saron lowered her to the armored plate she had landed on and the tentacle released her. She dropped to the ground weakly. "I do not expect you to consider this so quickly, Eonar. This is quite the offer I have given you, after all. Take some time to think it over, and present it to your fellow Titans." There was something like a dull thud in the back of her mind. "This backdoor will allow you to communicate with me at will." Eonar made to stand, but another thick tentacle forced her back down. "No, please, allow me, as a show of goodwill, to do so."
It loomed its face over her and opened one of the small maws that looked like they were taking the place of eyes. A smokey ball of violet shadows flew out and reached Eonar, exploding over her. Immediately, she felt... surprisingly good. The deep marks and dents Yogg-Saron had left on her body filled out on their own as the empowering shadows made their way through her body, removing the diminishing effects of the smoke and neutralizing the apathy of the dark bolts. Within seconds Eonar was on her feet, summoning her staff back to her and looking up at Yogg-Saron's massive body.
She frowned, trembled, but then sighed and looked up at Yogg-Saron compassionately. "Thank you, Yogg-Saron. I will consider what you have spoken here today." She raised her staff and twirled it, arcane lights flowing down across her body, and she teleported away.
"They are afraid!" Khaz'goroth bellowed. "Why else would the Old Gods request a truce than being afraid of losing? They stand to gain nothing from this proposition, it is appeasement and nothing more!" He slammed his hammer on the conference table, looking at them all in challenge. "I say we continue the assault. This request from Yogg-Saron is clearly an indication that we are winning!"
There were mutters of agreement from Aggramar, Golganneth, and even a short grunt from Aman'thul. It was true; they were winning. Inch by inch, the land the Titans controlled expanded outwards and while they weren't willing to make a move on the three remaining Old Gods, they didn't seem too keen on attacking themselves either. They were afraid.
Norgannon stepped forward. "We are winning, and that is something to consider. However powerful the Old Gods are, we are outmaneuvering them. Which leads to the question why should we not accept this offer? We can contain the Old Gods on this world. We can lead..." He looked over at Aman'thul. "Your brother, to them. However that encounter ends, one of the two will no longer be an issue."
They continued to argue back and forth, but Eonar was hardly listening. She kept replaying Yogg-Saron's words in her head. The comparison between Titans and Old Gods. The rationale behind them opposing Sargeras. The deal. The horrible reality of Reorigination, revealed to her by an outsider looking in. Upon returning to the Celestial Ark, she had summoned the rest of the Pantheon at once and explained most of what happened with the Old God of Death. She left out the history of the Old Gods, and the strange brand of kindness it had shown in giving her mercy, instead of killing her and crippling the Pantheon's power, and then healing her wounds.
She looked at Khaz'goroth. He'd been the one to suggest the Reorigination Protocol. Aman'thul and Norgannon had fully endorsed it and, at the time, so had she.
Murderers, she thought. Exactly what we detest. Pointless slaughter. Upheaval for the sake of upheaval. Where did it all go so wrong?
"What do we possibly lose?" she asked herself. "What can we stand to lose by leaving this planet be?"
Eventually, the discussions ran their course, and Aman'thul held up his free hand. "I have heard enough," he said. Eonar looked at him hopefully, hoping and cursing herself for hoping that they would leave TR-A235NB-653560721 behind and spare the remaining Old Gods. They were somewhat of an endangered species, after all. "For countless eons we have ridden the streams between the stars, remaking the cosmos in the image of our homeworld. There is a reason we have done such. The inevitable must be delayed as long as possible, and as such entropy must be minimized. We must not forget the end of our plan; total order and ease of life for all in the universe."
She felt her heart dropping.
"One measly planet must not stand in the way of that grand plan. Ordering will continue as scheduled." Most of the other Titans looked pleased. Norgannon, who'd supported the truce, simply blinked and shrugged.
Ordering will continue as scheduled, she heard. Continue as scheduled. Eonar grimaced and narrowed her eyes. She stepped back from the table, making the rest of the Pantheon look her way. She clenched her right hand around her staff and turned around, storming away. The doors sensed her motion and slid open silently, then closed just as silently behind her as she left the conference hall.
She felt so... betrayed. She'd trusted Aman'thul. She loved him. She thought he trusted her. And to just do... this? What had the Old Gods done wrong, at least that which they themselves hadn't?
He has betrayed you. It sounded like something an Old God would whisper, but the thought came to her mind on its own.
Eonar reached into the connection Yogg-Saron had left in her mind and sent a message towards it. 'I was unable to convince Aman'thul. His words were: Ordering will continue as scheduled.' She heard nothing from Yogg-Saron, and she continued to storm through the halls to her own private chambers. She saw Aman'thul teleport next to her, worry clear on his face, but didn't stop.
He easily followed after her, using his staff as a crutch. "Eonar, what troubles you?"
"You know full well what troubles me," she said sharply. "Our people are dying on this world! How many lives is it worth, when we can simply leave? For all your speaking of how important it is to continue the Ordering you didn't seem to even consider that maybe our plan is not so perfect and flawless as you make it out to be!" She was shouting by the end. Why were the inhabitants of a single planet bothering her so much? One planet was not much. She had personally sent the reorigination signal to countless... oh.
"The Ordering is perfect. You said so yourself when you formulated the path we would take through the cosmos."
"We are hardly perfect ourselves," she said, not stopping her furious walk. "We were wrong in many things with the Ordering, least of all is what we are doing now. How many have we destroyed, destroyed Aman'thul, because some of their fellows did not fit into our way of seeing things?" She stopped and turned to glare at him. "How many others did we wipe out simply for the crime of already being there, instead of easing them into the new world? I hardly think our plan is anywhere even close to perfect. Something in it, perhaps multiple things, are fundamentally flawed!"
He gazed at her, glowing blue eyes meeting her own green ones. "You sound just like he did."
She recoiled as if struck. For a moment energies flowed along her bronze skin and up her staff, and Aman'thul simply raised an eyebrow as if to say, Are you really going to try? Eonar forced her magic down, and flashed an open scowl at Aman'thul. "Forgive me for my impudence, Highfather," she said, spitting the word out as if it were a curse. She engulfed herself in vines and teleported as far away from him as she possibly could.
Eonar floated high above the battlefield, wrapped in the protective magics of all the other Titans. Power flowed from her feet like a geyser, keeping her aloft. She stared down at the combat below.
The Titans floated and blinked around wildly, dodging tentacle flails and magic bolts. Just looking at the figure they fought, with its twitching, gibbering maws and no eyes, made her eyes hurt, so she looked elsewhere. She would've had to have been a lunatic to willingly gaze upon its form now.
She extended her staff towards Aggramar, and he was cleansed of all curses, poisons, diseases and harmful magics. She did the same to Norgannon, then to Aman'thul, then Khaz'goroth. She sent a healing seed into her son, rejuvenating him before bursting forth with life energy, healing everyone in her sight. Meanwhile the Old God of Death, whom they had finally managed to separate from the other two, snarled and lashed at them with its tendrils, laughing maniacally and roaring deafeningly as bolts of magic struck and scarred its skin.
It made Eonar feel sick.
The battle had been raging for a long while, and Yogg-Saron was finally showing hints of weakening. So were they, of course; battling an Old God was never an easy venture and one mistake would spell all of their deaths. They'd deemed C'thun the most dangerous of the five, but they'd also discounted just how dangerous the Old Gods' mental magic was. Yogg-Saron was easily one of the worst in those regards, surpassed only by N'zoth.
As far as the eye could see, the Old God's continent-sized body sent up salvos of magic, set to arc down upon them. Aggramar's sword swung, and black blood flew. Crusher tentacles spewed green mist, and Golganneth cleared it out with winds as best he could. Curses of doom fired, sending spikes of cold through them. Life was extinguished repeatedly in a wide area, forcing them to recover or be struck down while they were weakened. But they were winning. They were Titans, after all, they always won. It would be a breach from order if they were to lose, and if a Titan was not orderly then what were they?
Yogg-Saron looked away from Aman'thul's lightning field and up at her. It had no eyes, but she got the impression it was angry by the way its smaller maws tightened up. The rest of the Pantheon didn't see, but Eonar had no doubts the Old God could see the liquid metal streaming from her eyes.
'I'm sorry,' she sent to it.
Its 'expression' relaxed and it rumbled mournfully low in its throat. 'I know.' It opened its mouth and roared, shaking her vision. With that opening, Aman'thul channeled cosmic rays deep into its throat. The roar trailed off into a weak keen, and Yogg-Saron collapsed limply, falling to the fly-blown plains below with an earth-shattering crash. Eonar wiped away the trails of molten iron staining her cheeks.
They floated down to just above its head, and Norgannon held out an arm. "It is incapacitated. Let us begin constructing the prison post haste. Aggramar, Khaz'goroth, you go north. Golganneth and I will head southeast. Aman'thul, you and Eonar go southwest."
Aggramar grinned. "Two to go," he said with a twirl of his half-sword, teleporting away. One by one the other Titans left, until it was just her and Aman'thul.
He looked at her concernedly. "Are you coming?"
"In a moment," she said a little snappier than she intended. "I just need to make sure it's out cold."
He nodded. "Don't linger long, their influence is incredibly corruptive." His voice turned concerned. "I don't want it to hurt you, even in its sleep." Then he teleported away with a thunderclap, leaving her alone with Yogg-Saron.
Eonar floated over and landed on its coiled-up neck. The Titaness hesitated a long moment, debating with herself. Then she nodded resolutely. Eonar held up her crooked staff and pointed it towards its head, channeling magic along it. A short green cylinder flew out and into its head, then back out with a purple fog inside of it, in addition to a sample of blue-green flesh. Her staff seemingly ate the samples, tethering the slightest portion of its soul to her staff. Then she teleported to follow Aman'thul.
Ordering continued as scheduled.
The mortals fought viciously, slinging spells and arrows of great power into the crowd of weakened Faceless Ones. The Old God looked left, and it looked right. They were faltering, but so was it.
So, this was its end.
It opened its mouth for what it was certain was the absolute last time, to deliver one last message to haunt its executioners. "Your fate is sealed! The end of days is finally upon you, and all who inhabit this miserable little seedling! The shadow of my corpse will choke this land for all eternity!"
Then there was darkness, absolute and profound.
And... a faint glimmer of green.
The Titan Fleet's ships were mostly identical to each other. Each ship was a thin disk with a pair of rectangles attached to their end, perpendicular to the disk and parallel to each other. The ships were bronze and ivory, and glowed with the azure light typical of Titan magics. They slunk through the inky blackness of space to their target, a system with three terrestrial planets to Order, one after another. They were unstoppable in their quest and unwavering in their resolve. Each ship was similar to another, differing only in size or the designs painted on them. Any difference in function could only be determined when the ships were in action, otherwise their technologies all looked the same. The Titan Flagship, the Celestial Ark, was twice the size of any other ship, and lead the way to the next star at speeds much greater than that of light.
Nothing of interest happened on the Celestial Ark.
On a little ship near the end of the thousands-strong fleet, a function came into play; a personal cruiser left. The driver of the cruiser had the second highest authority among the Titans, so the engineers and crewmembers didn't even consider denying them. The personal cruiser was, of course, the same shape as the rest of the ships. It broke away from the formation and vanished out of sight, untraceable. It would be hours before the Pantheon discovered what had happened.
At the helm of the ship sat a lady of green-tinted bronze, fifty feet tall. Her eyes were smooth, glowing garnets, and her long green hair, made of strands of metal, was done up in a cross between a bun and ponytail, spilling across her back and punctuated here and there with giant pink flowers. She'd left her Ordering Robes back on the Celestial Ark, wearing only a casual set of clothes that barely concealed her breasts and hid her reproductive organs, revealing the powerful muscles in her stomach, if they could even be called 'muscles' as mortals understood them. She finished punching in coordinates to the ship's magical guidance system and stood, her every movement graceful and head-turning.
Eonar's eyes went to the staff in the corner. It was as white as could be, a long rod of Titansteel that thickened towards the top. Near the top, it curved into an arc that resembled a crescent moon, leaving a wide 'hole' in the middle. Eternally rotating vines crawled across its surface, driven by magical currents beyond reckoning.
Near said staff was her passenger.
The Titans had, upon Ordering TR-A235NB-653560721, created the iron vrykul as was typical of the procedure. They hadn't expected the dreaming Old Gods to transform a large number of them into flesh and blood, and it was a female vrykul that floated near the staff. Her skin was like bronze, and her leather shoes floated a long way from the ground. The fifteen-foot tall vrykul had brown hair that spilled down across her face and a headband along her head.
Above her waist, her stomach was exposed and showed none of the muscles Eonar did, but her brown clothing offered far more modesty than Eonar's. Her shoulders were exposed to show tribal vrykul runes grafted into the skin, she wore gauntlets with large orange crystals and fingerless gloves. Beneath her nondescript brown skirt, which went all the way to her shoes, she wore leather pants. Her cheekbones were angled in such a way that even her neutral expression appeared like a scowl.
The vrykul's eyes had a glowing orange sclera instead of white, there were no pupils, and the irises were smooth discs of pale brown with only the slightest hint of a spiral pattern in them.
"I still don't know quite how you did it," Sara said. "I am grateful for it, but I remain confused."
The Titaness walked over to the floating vrykul a third of her size. She held out her right hand and the staff floated into it. She gave it a playful twirl. "There's a reason they call me the Lifebinder, you know."
Sara nodded, smirking. "Yes, I suppose there is. So where precisely are we headed?"
Eonar turned back to the helm and zapped it with a green bolt from her staff. The window, which had been showing the stars crawling by with agonizing slowness, was replaced by the picture of a planet.
"This world. VI-N703PL-0. It floats out in the void beyond galaxies, which makes detecting it functionally impossible unless you happen to know what to look for. The gravity is similar to... what was your world called? I didn't think to bring the data file."
"Your creations ended up calling it 'Azeroth'," Sara said. "Your creations are terrible with names, by the way."
The Titaness rolled her eyes. "Thank you for that. Anyway, it's quite similar to what 'Azeroth' was when we came upon it. Rampant volcanism, elementals freed from their planes, atmosphere comprised of primarily hydrogen and helium. Free, wild magic in place of leylines. Gravity is similar, the day and night cycle are slightly shorter though. There is also only one moon to provide tidal stabilization. It's also firmly out of the way of any demonic legions." She turned back to Sara. "Sound good?"
Sara didn't face her, and instead floated up to the picture of the planet, tracing her fingers along it. "It's... perfect."
"I also assume you know how you constructed your form last time?"
"I do, but I'll need something to start off of," Sara explained, still facing away from the Titan.
"Leave that to me. Like I said, I'm not called the Lifebinder for nothing," Eonar said with a gentle smile. "We should be getting there in a year, Azeroth time."
Sara marveled in the picture of the world for a little while longer. Then, still floating, she turned around to face Eonar. She drifted to her, eyes level with the Titan's.
"Eonar, I don't think you fully understand what this means to me. I am in your debt."
The Lifebinder tilted her head slightly, her cheeks turning dark orange as she flustered from the praise. "It is the least I can do, Yo - "
"No," Sara said sharply. "You don't get it." She reached out a comparatively small hand to Eonar's cheek. "Thank you," she whispered.
And it was in earnest.
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