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Not Half Bad, Part 2

by Silverr, for Jack of None

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Once through the portal, Asric wasn't sure what unnerved him more: that he was in the fabled Wizard's Sanctum of Stormwind—with dozens of the most legendary books of magic within reach—or that the gnome's Orb had transformed him into a draenei.

A female draenei.

Because yes, those certainly were breasts on his chest. Counterbalancing them in the back was a tail, which made him feel a bit as if the lower half of his body was put on backwards. When he took a step the combination of the long robe he'd magically acquired and the unfamiliar bending and flexing that was going on below his knees made him stagger a little.

"First time through?" An acolyte was watching him with far too much curiosity. "It can be disorienting."

"Yes," Asric said truthfully. His voice, a velvety contralto, pleased him. "I'll be fine." Draenei… he'd have to remember to be excessively polite. Wasn't that going to be a chore. "Er, thank you for your concern."

He hurried forward toward the purple-runed arch that held the only visible exit.

Sun's light, this body was bouncy.

He was just about to give his new breasts a test squeeze when he noticed bookcases and a High Sorcerer.

"Do you have any books for me?" the sorcerer asked eagerly.

"Ah, no. No sir." Asric did his best imitation of a curtsy, then followed the ramp ahead of him, which curved down and out of sight.

At the bottom of the ramp was a flickering mage portal to Outland. Could Jadaar have gone there? It was possible, he supposed, but unlikely. Asric went through the arched exit and out into the open twilight air.

A ridiculous number of tree-branches obscured his view, but when he put out his hand as if to strangle the leaves a gust of wind blew everything aside. Below him and just ahead, a familiar blue tail passed under a lantern and then bobbed out of sight. Asric jumped down, wincing at the impact, and ran after it.

What an appalling rabbit warren this Alliance city was! To follow Jadaar he had to go through a tunnel, across a canal, into another tunnel (another tunnel? Were the humans claustrophilic?), turned right, then left at a fountain, passed a notice board… and damnit, he'd lost him. He thought longingly of Silvermoon's wide avenues.

Someone bumped into him.

"Cheese and mead, food of the ancestors!" The speaker was a dwarf, white haired and bearded, with peculiar glowing eyes. "Dargrim of Ironforge, at yer service mi'lady. Are you lost? Hungry? Thirsty? Lonely? Hungry?"

"No… not… no. No. I just lost—" Asric was inspired. "—my purse. Yes. I think a pickpocket must have taken all my money. I don't even have enough silver to fly home." He put one hand on his chest and fluttered it as if helpless.

"Here's fare and something to eat." The dwarf pressed a few coins and a small wheel of cheese into Asric's hand. "Give the guards a description, if you can. They'll catch the dirty thief."

"Ah, yes. Thank you." Asric saw a familiar hulking blue figure carrying a bouquet of flowers come out of a shop next to the city's main gate, and then lean against a lamppost while he ate something. "You're very kind," Asric told the dwarf, "but I must go. Now."

"Farewell," the death knight said with a bow. "And just remember," he said, leaning in with a raised eyebrow, "if you're ever this way again, there are those who don't mind hooves or a tail one bit."

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To Asric's surprise Jadaar didn't go out the main gate: instead he walked to the end of the block – passing so close that the panic-frozen Asric could have poked him—and then turned right, following a sign that said "Gryphon Roost."

Asric followed, trying to act casual. Up the ramp, across the boards, reaching the roost just as Jadaar's bird took off. "My stupid brother," he said quickly to the gryphon master, "he was supposed to wait for me, and then he… dropped his cheese, and now I have to chase after him. Where did he fly to?"

"Darkshire, in Duskwood," the human said. "Three silver, 30 copper."

Asric paid the fare, hiked up his robe, and managed to get relatively situated before the gryphon took off.

He had to admit, the quick glimpse he got of the Stormwind gates, of their five towering, torchlit statues overlooking the wide stone bridge, had a rugged energy that was somewhat impressive. Nowhere near as elegant or graceful as Silvermoon, of course, but not entirely unappealing.

The rest of the ride took place in near darkness, the only sound the whoosh of the gryphon's wings and the rustling of the black treetops below. As the bird spiraled down Asric could see some commotion going on in a town square near a fountain: a dozen or so figures were fighting something large and lumpy and white. In their midst was Jadaar, swinging what looked like a glowing sledgehammer in one hand and a pickaxe in the other. Now and again a swirl of lightning or wind surrounded him.

As soon as Asric landed he ran down the hill toward the fight. The white lump was an unusually large Abomination, which fell with a thud and a gust of noxious gases just as Asric reached the fountain.

Someone shoved a bucket of water at him, and he realized that he had run into the midst of a line of townsfolk trying to put out a fire in the town hall. As he passed buckets he noticed Jadaar kneeling next to a Watcher whose shoulder was an ugly, bloody mess of muscle and bone. Jadaar held one hand over the wound, and with the other made a sort of emphatic lifting gesture, but it wasn't until streams and sparkles of golden light began floating up from the Watcher's wound that Asric realized Jadaar had cast a spell: based on the glowing blue sigil above Jadaar's forehead, it had been Gift of the Naaru.

Asric generally didn't give much thought to Jadaar being Draenei in the sense of belonging to an entire race with a distinct culture and history and innate magical abilities: for him draenei was simply a word, like windbag and oaf, associated with a particular individual. An individual who, until this moment, Asric had never seen fight, and never seen heal. It was odd, how those few moments almost made Jadaar seem like a different person. An intriguing stranger.

Asric kept passing buckets—the town hall was now mostly smoking rather than burning—and surreptitiously watched as Jadaar went into the blacksmith's. When he came out a moment later without the sledgehammer or the pickaxe and started walking back toward the flight-master, Asric stepped out of the bucket line and ran after him.

Seeing Jadaar in action had given Asric an idea on how to make it easier to follow the draenei: appeal to his ridiculously old-fashioned sense of chivalry toward a damsel in distress. "Excuse me?"

"Yes?"

"Can you help me? I… I need to get away from here. I think I'm being followed. Would you be my bodyguard? I don't feel safe staying in this town by myself."

"I'm sorry," Jadaar said with a small bow, "but I'm already late for… there's a place I have to be." He started walking again, but he looked conflicted.

"Please, I'm begging you," Asric said, knowing that he was closing in on his prey. "I don't care where you're going, as long as it's away from here. I'll sit quietly in the corner, I promise. I won't make any trouble. You won't even know I'm there."

Jadaar stopped, studied him for a second, then nodded. "Alright. I hope she won't mind." He picked up his bouquet of flowers, which he'd apparently stick in a knothole of the fence when he landed, and asked the flight-master, "Can this woman ride on my pass?"

Pass? Jadaar had a pass? For what?

"If she fits on the bird with you, I don't see why not."

Jadaar stuck the stems of the bouquet into the collar of his breastplate, swung onto a gryphon, and, before Asric could protest, lifted him up to sit sidesaddle in front of him. Asric's legs were draped over Jadaar's left thigh, leaving him little to hold onto except the draenei's left forearm.

Jadaar made a clicking noise, and the gryphon sprang into the air and headed southeast.

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It was, once he got over the terror, a rather pleasant ride.

Jadaar's right arm, which was holding the pommel of the saddle, supported Asric's back. Jadaar's left arm, which was sort of half-encircling him, was being moved by the motion of the bird across Asric's breasts – and though it was undoubtedly a side effect of the Orb, it all was creating an increasingly tingly warmth in his nethers. Really, with bodies this sensitive, it was a miracle that draenei women ever got out of bed at all. Asric wondered how they managed coupling if two tails were involved. Certain positions would be more comfortable than others, he supposed. That thought quickly led to a fleeting curiosity about whether it would be possible to take full advantage of the realism of the Orb he was wearing, and with the images that this thought brought up he had to bite his lip.

"So," Asric said, casually letting his left hand drop to his lap, and then slide over the side of his thigh to rest on Jadaar's codpiece. "Where is it that we are going?" Blessed sun! As he well remembered, that bulge supporting his wrist wasn't padding.

"Madam," Jadaar said coldly. "Move your hand, or I will toss you off this gryphon."

"You don't like me?" Asric said, quickly putting his hand back in his own lap.

"I didn't say that," Jadaar said, a little less sternly. "But I'm spoken for."

"I see." Spoken for? So Jadaar was having an affair! Was he on his way to an assignation? It would certainly explain his coldness, and secretiveness, and the purchase of flowers. It didn't quite explain the sudden influx of money, unless … was Jadaar being kept?

Well, that was ridiculous. Who'd want a stodgy one-eyed slab of blue beef anyhow?

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The landscape below them changed; trees thinned and then disappeared, in their place a terrain of jutting stone. Asric had a vague sense that they must be near the Swamp of Sorrows, but it wasn't until a hulking, vaguely phallic shape began to resolve out of the darkness ahead that he was certain.

Medivh's Folly.

Jadaar's lover was in Karazhan.

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revised 28 jan 2018