Authors Notes: I'd like to start off by saying that this work, specifically, is not entirely my own creation. The idea spun off of a StarCraft/Warcraft crossover I read called Reigns of War by TheWatcher2785 on . I stumbled upon his work when I decided I wanted to read a fan-fiction delving into the Heroes of the Storm mythos. Finding no such stories, I decided - instead - to write my own. Having issues building a backstory revolving around the Nexus and why these characters were drawn there, I decided that I would base a portion of my work off of his tales to ease this transition on.

It is important to note that the earlier chapters will sound a lot like Reigns of War but I plan on rewriting all of it: not because I didn't like it (quite the opposite actually), but because I want to make it my own. Small grammatical errors aside, there were a few points in the story I would have done differently and, since it will end up in an entirely different direction, there will be a lot of additions along to way to build up to something more.

That being said, imitation is the best form of flattery, they say.

Though this story will start out on a very Protossy note, there will be dozens of Warcraft characters along the way, so bare with me.

Aaaaaaand now that all of that is out of the way, on with the show...


BROKEN ANGELS
A Heroes of the Storm fanfiction


-ACT I-
Collision

Legends speak of a place where world's collide and mighty heroes battle for dominance...


Chapter 1: Prelude

UNEXPLORED REGION OF THE KOPRULU SECTOR
11:54 - Shipboard Time

"Hold, my brothers! Our reinforcements should arrive shortly!" declared - what appeared to be - a man, clad in an ancient armor forged from some unknown yellowish metallic alloy. He swung his right arm forward and, as he did so, what sounded like some kind of electrical surge emanated from the armor surrounding his forearm.

Almost immediately, an energy took form from the back-side of his wrist. Its brilliant white-blue light lit up the battlefield that was unfolding on the planet around them. Despite it being almost mid-day according to their shipboard clocks, each world was different, and the sun had not yet risen on this unexplored world.

The light that emanated from the blade - and it truly did look like a sword - seemed to be feeding off of the rage within the warriors heart. As he closed the gap between him and his enemy, he swung his forearm out, cleaving his adversary in two. The beast fell apart as if it were nothing more than a banana being sliced.

As the pieces fell to the ground, the warrior turned around to look over the battlefield. There were plenty more targets to choose from. Hundreds - no, thousands - of the things skittered about the battlefield, overtaking everything in their wake - more similar to insects than the superior lifeforms that they were.

Another group of similarly-dressed warriors struggled against their own foes, though they didn't seem to be having as much luck. Seven of the creatures - the little ones at least - had bared down on three of the warriors.

"Stand strong Zealots! Just a little longer..." the first warrior, who appeared to be their leader, called out to them. Zealot's were low-ranking members of the Templar caste and, as such, were the backbone of the warrior's army. "We are Protoss!"

"We are the Firstborn!" shouted another of the Zealots, as he took the face of one of his attackers clean off.

"We will never allow ourselves to be surpassed by your kind..." he said, though his argument seemed rather difficult to believe as three more of the creatures rushed to take the dead one's place. He dodged the first, but the second one caught him in his right shoulder and, as it sank its teeth in, he fell on his back in agony. He did not get back up. Like the end of many a tale, this being had been felled by hands of his people's most hated foe.

The Zerg.

They were the evolutionary siblings of the Protoss, though the two races couldn't have looked more different. They were both the children of the Xel'naga, the Protoss being the first of the two species to have been created by the mysterious beings. At first, the Protoss had believed them to be extinct, but they had recently discovered that to be false. In truth, the Xel'naga had shaped both the Protoss and then the Zerg with the ultimate intent of the two species eventually coming back together to reform the ancient race.

Though recent actions suggested that the time of the Xel'naga's return was near, the Protoss had been awaiting their to return for eons. They could bear to wait a little longer.

The Protoss, themselves, looked human enough from a distance. They were usually about the same height as the tallest humans the species had to offer - seven feet - but from afar, it was difficult to accurately tell the difference.

Close up, however, they would never pass as human. Each Protoss had a bluish-violet hue in the pigment of their scaly skin, though the shade varied between individuals. Most notably, their eyes glowed with some form of energy. Each had a crest that stretched back from the crown of their head.

Their legs had two knee joints, the lower-most bending forwards rather than back. Their hands had four digits rather than five and they were positioned differently than human hands, each possessing two thumbs. Their shoulders were more broad than humans too, though their bodies were much more slender in their midsection.

The most important physical difference between Protoss and human physiology were several nerve cords that hung from their heads. Though they looked like hair, these nerves actually served as the organs that fueled the energy that surged within them. Furthermore, it had been because of those nerves that the species, as a whole, had been able to tap into the psychic energies that the Protoss were so well known for. The study of this psychic energy had since been referred to as Psionics.

The Protoss had been shaped by the Xel'naga eons ago on the planet known as Aiur and, under their guidance, their latent psionic powers developed. As the species progressed, their technology had been built around it. All forms of Protoss machinery, to some extent, bore some form of the psionic technology.

In their current state, the Protoss looked nearly the polar opposite of the species known as the Zerg. The creatures that the Zealots fought were known to be called Zerglings - one of the simplest, yet overwhelmingly deadly, breeds that the Zerg had evolved into over the ages. Unlike the Protoss, who - for the most part - came in only a few shapes and sizes, the countless Zerg breeds looked extremely different from one another.

The species as a whole looked like horribly disfigured variations of the worst fauna the Koprulu Sector had to offer - and for good reason. The Xel'naga had discovered the original zerg on the planet Zerus. They gifted the Zerg with the 'purity of essence,' making them the counterparts of the Protoss, whom they they had shaped with the 'purity of form'; the two species were intended to eventually merge to perpetuate the Xel'naga lifecycle.

The Xel'naga created the brain-like Overmind to control the Zerg swarm. The Overmind oversaw the swarm's rapid evolution, created the Cerebrates that served as the swarm's intermediary leaders, and divided them into broods. They had a very hive-like caste structure that was, at the time, led by the Queen of Blades.

The Zerg swarm, as a whole, were extremely vicious and tenacious creatures. Their natural armor and weaponry could be compared to modern technology in terms of physical durability, and they proved extremely resistant to chemical agents, though their biological nature was still vulnerable to certain kinds of concentrated radiation.

Most notably, the Zerg were known for their quick adaptability and their mastery over evolution. It was for this reason the various breeds were so physically different. They had simply evolved to fill different niches within the Swarm. Some looked like monstrous dogs, with spiked tails and hellish claws. Some looked like gargantuan snakes, albeit in the most abstract sense, with sickle-like appendages for arms. Even the buildings that offered them protection were a living, breathing part of the Swarm, though they looked more akin to vital organs than housing. The Zerg swarm would have been a very odd place to call home.

The hundreds of Zerglings, that circled in around the Zealots then, looked like a pack of ravenous dogs, primitively feral but obedient and loyal only to their master. The warriors knew that Zerglings, in particular, were among the least horrific forms these creatures took, but that didn't make them any less deadly as the three remaining warriors scanned the battlefield for the reinforcements they so eagerly awaited.

The endless tide of terror never faltered. For every Zergling the Zealots managed to slay, two or three more would quickly take its place. The warriors struggled to keep up with them despite their life-long training. When they had first arrived at the outpost, their numbers were much more substantial, but the unending wave of the Swarm wouldn't let up and only three Zealot's were left standing.

The Protoss came to this unexplored world on a whim, hearing rumors of an ancient Xel'naga weapon that could have offered some valuable leverage during the war, but the last few hours had pushed all thoughts of their original mission to the back of their mind. They came to this planet backed with the full might of the High Templar, counting the Zealot Order, that was composed of their lowest-ranking members, among them. They brought with them dozens of Stalkers and Immortals, both of which were upgraded models of the older war machines that had been designed as a way to allow Templar to continue fighting, even after their bodies could not.

Earlier in the fight, even the mighty Colossi rained down upon the battlefield from their Carrier-class ships that had been positioned somewhere in high orbit. It seemed as if the highly advanced Protoss had brought to this world a battalion of every warrior-class that the psionic race had to offer. Despite their rank, each warrior did their part in cleansing this world of the Zerg with the vigor and skill that were hallmarks of the psionic people.

"How much longer do you think he'll be, Tethis? I am unsure how much more of this my body can take..." one of the three survivors inquired. As he looked to his superior for answers, the momentary distraction was all one Zergling needed to slide its barbed tail through the Zealot's thigh. He couldn't spin out of the way in time. His fatigue, simply, wouldn't allow it.

Tethis understood where he was coming from. His own muscles had begun giving out minutes ago, yet somehow he still managed to push through the exhaustion.

Though coming here had been somewhat of a last-minute decision, the Zealots were initially sent to this planet to investigate an unusual distortion emanating on the worlds surface. It was dubbed a 'seed world' due to the abundant amount of exploitable materials littered about its surface. Once they had landed, however, it had become all too clear that the Zerg had already discovered this planet and had long since begun to colonize it. Having harvested quite a bit of the worlds resources, Tethis wondered if Kerrigan and her Swarm hadn't already discovered the Xel'naga artifact.

The Zerglings quickly jumped on top of the injured Zealot, and Tethis ran for his friend and compatriot. His fury came to a fever pitch and, as he thought of the situation at hand, both of his psionic blades burst forth from the forearm units of his power-suit.

Tethis impaled the first of the creatures through its torso, but there were already three more atop his underling. He jumped back a few feet and slashed the blade of his right arm in a wide semicircle. As he did so the Zerglings fell apart. Two of them did, anyway.

He helped his friend up, or tried to, as the other Zealot defended them. They wouldn't be able to hold the Warp Gate much longer.

With information gleaned from the Protoss' Observers, they had learned that the hive cluster that had colonized this world was not of Kerrigan's Swarm at all. Rather, a Cerebrate that had somehow survived the great purge of their kind by the Queen of Blades, had gained control of the invading brood. A massive Protoss fleet was dispatched to the world in the hopes of garnering the resources before this brood cluster could acquire them. The Dark Templar had been the only forces of the fleet who had not yet showed their faces in the battle.

The High Templar had accomplished the task of defeating the worm-like brain known as the Cerebrate with precision. Their success had proven to be short lived, however. Without the guiding influence of their Cerebrate, the remaining Zerg population had begun to run rampant on the planets surface. They had begun attacking the other hive colonies, as well as what Protoss remained, with an underlying nihilistic savagery that the Queen of Blades would normally curb.

Even now, apparently victorious, Tethis found it hard to take this victory in stride; and as the battle of attrition waged on, he was beginning to believe that reinforcements would never make it in time.

That was when he noticed a shimmering light in the distance. It soared through the sky as fast as it could, passing over a large Protoss structure in the distance. The building was massive, and its pyramid-shape was magnificent, but it was of no importance to Tethis at the time. The flickering object in the distance drew his attention.

Closer inspection revealed the rotating hull of a ship that looked like some form of octopus, but this was no Zerg. The reflection of the sun's light off of the vessel, as it finally peeked over the horizon, told him that it was built with some kind of metal at least.

As it approached the area where Tethis and the few remaining Zealots were held up, the ship seemed to open up. It sprouted something akin to wings, though the ship itself still looked more like some sort of ocean creature. It hovered in mid-air and its glowing wings gave off some kind of violet hue.

Tethis knew the vessel to be called a Warp Prism. It was perfect for transporting units and could be used in conjunction with a Warp Gate to transport an entire army in moments if one knew how to properly control the ship.

Almost as if on cue, a white light washed over the battlefield, and Tethis could no longer see the injured Zealots or the fierce Zerg. He was only blinded for a moment, however, but when he could see he again, he had been surrounded by hundreds of Dark Templar. They had been saved.

One among them stood out. His upper body was covered in armor crafted out of an unknown gray alloy. His pauldrons gave off a green glow as the man approached their tired bodies, one of which bled profusely from his thigh.

Even more astounding than the man who approached him then was the gargantuan vessel that hovered above the battlefield. One of just three of its kind, the arkship floated there like an angel of Terran lore that promised vengeance; both divine and absolute.

"This is Hierarch Artanis, commanding the Spear of Adun!" a voice called out to everyone on the planet below. Every Protoss knew him and the vessel as the flagship in the war against the Dark Voice, Amon. "Activating mass recall now."

The Protoss could communicate psionically through long distances. Tethis knew that the voice he heard was not the Protoss that approached him, but he embraced the Templar all the same.

Seconds later, an even larger vessel blocked out the sun's light as it hovered over the battlefield. The ship was surrounded by hundreds of smaller Scout-class ships, and even smaller machines that flew alongside them. Tethis had witnessed the power of the Spear of Adun before, as his people sought to reclaim Aiur.

The arkship looked like a golden icicle floating in the heavens then. More white lights began to manifest all around the Dark Templar and the few Zealots that survived. Reaching beyond time and space, more Protoss forces appeared from the magnificent white lights. More Stalkers and Immortals, at least a dozen of each, which would certainly even the odds a bit, but Tethis still felt that even all of that wouldn't be enough. Not after what he'd learned from what was most likely the last Zerg Cerebrate left alive.

"Inbound aerial units sir!" said one of the technicians onboard the Spear of Adun.

Aboard the arkship, Artanis quickly pulled up the readings his subordinate had just mentioned. He didn't need to.

Another holo-display had already been brought on screen that showed the outside of the ship, but he could barely see a thing. Thousands of enormous flying creatures blotted out the sun, but it was just enough to make some of them out: Mutalisks, Corruptors, Brood Lords and who knew what else.

Artanis was at a loss for words, save three.

"By the Gods..."

Even with their recent reinforcements and the Spear of Adun's anti-matter cannons, the Protoss were left with no choice but to retreat. The savage Zerg colony was just too much.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, the wounded had been transported aboard the arkship with the assistance of the Warp Prism. The remaining Protoss fought as hard as they could, but the multitude of terrors were unending. Now that the flying ones had joined the hive, they were forced back into their base.

The Dark Templar that wore the intricate gray armor focused on defending the Stalkers and the Immortals, but even he, as brilliant of a warrior as he appeared to be, couldn't keep up with the endless waves. Tethis had heard the others call him Zeratul.

"We must abandon this world now," Artanis called out. "It pains me to call off our search for the Xel'naga artifact, but there is no benefit from senseless bloodshed."

Tethis was inclined to agree. He had seen little else but slaughter on this world when all of his people only wanted peace and the restoration of Aiur. In the mean time the Hierarch had been using the Xel'naga's arkship as their main base of operations.

"Mass recall incoming..." Artanis told his followers on the unexplored world below.

As they were forced back into their base, the Protoss prepared for the mass recall that had been ordered. However, having use of only one Warp Gate, not all of them could warp at once. The Warp Prism had to return several times to transport most of the Protoss aboard the Spear of Adun.

"You should only need to hold out for just a moment longer!" Artanis announced aboard the vessel.

"We cannot allow them to pass beyond this point!" barked Zeratul as he rallied what remained of the groundside forces to hold back the siege. He ordered some of the robotic probes that worked on repairing the base to construct several photon cannons to fortify their position in the mean time.

Though the Zerg's loss of guidance, since they had killed the last Cerebrate, was evident in how they lashed out at random, a great many of them somehow managed to focus their attention on the still-active Warp Gate being powered by a nearby pylon.

The Protoss had no nose to speak of, but that did not mean that they lacked a sense of smell. At that moment, the pores in Tethis' skin nearly made him sick as he sensed the the brewing disaster. He could feel the energy leaking off of the Warp Gate then, and it overwhelmed his senses.

"We must shut down that Warp Gate!" Zeratul explained, seeing Tethis' distaste. "The Mutalisks' venom is reacting with the Gate and causing it to malfunction. If it were to explode with the artifact in such close proximity, there is no telling what catastrophe may come upon us!"

"I'm on it," Tethis volunteered, commanding several Protoss probes to commence repairs of the Warp Gate. After they had been assigned their tasks, Tethis had attempted to input the shutdown sequence.

But the Gate's internal systems were far too damaged to follow its proper protocols. In their attempt to shut it down, the warp-field matrix began to destabilize around it.

Zeratul ordered his Dark Templar and the pilots of the warmachines to stall the Zerg assault on the gate while the probes worked on fixing the warp-field within the gate. Tethis worked on shutting down the pylon that powered it - but it was too little, too late as the Terran saying went. The warp-field began to grow and expand into an amorphous bubble of pure energy, catching many of the Protoss forces within its reach.

Having witnessed it all, Artanis could only stand from his control console as he watched the wave of energy descend upon him and his ship.

"En taro Tassadar..." were his final words, before both him and the Spear of Adun were swallowed up by the mysterious energy field.


Location: UNKNOWN
XX:XX - Shipboard Time UNKNOWN
Data download: ERROR
System recalibrating...

Dazed, Artanis was astounded to find his arkship in relatively decent condition. Whatever had just occurred on the planet's surface had instaneously gobbled them up and just as quickly spit them back out again.

"Are we..." Zeratul began to say, though the words escaped him for a moment. "Adun be with us."

His contemplation would have to wait though.

The Hierarch looked down at the computer console, it's instruments beeping to warn its inhabitants that something was causing massive damage to the arkships shields. Looking over the monitors, the psionic leader was confused by the sight that greeted him.

His people had all been safely transported aboard the Spear of Adun, but their problems didn't end there. The ships propulsion systems were acting up and Artanis quickly realized that he wouldn't have the time to repair the systems before his arkship fell out of the sky.

Long wisps of some blue energy shot up from the planet's surface at them. As airy as it seemed, the attack caused their shields considerable damage and, as they passed over the world's landscape, it didn't take long for Artanis to realize that they were no longer on the same planet that they had just been fighting the Zerg on.

His instruments couldn't tell him exactly where he was. They had been too badly damaged by whatever it was that the exploding Warp Gates had done to his ship. The Hierarch was certain, however, that they were no longer in the same part of the galaxy. Artanis had traversed the vastness of space many times at his age, and he was totally unfamiliar the correlation of the stars in the night sky.

"Power failing. Warning: Gravitational forces in planet's atmosphere..."

Artanis never heard the rest of the computer's ramblings. He didn't need to. He could see the ground flying towards him at increasing speeds. A large mountain rose over the horizon in the distance, that, without complete control of the ships computers they could never hope to avoid in time.

The Spear of Adun sent a wave of fire in its wake as it forced itself into the mountainside, but the world that Artanis had crash-landed into that day would prove to be unlike anything he had ever encountered before.