"Wut" I said intelligently.
"I said, there has been a new dungeon that appeared within the forests of Ardenweald" the queen replied with a grin at my eloquent reply.
"But that shouldn't be possible, Ardenweald has been around for ages. Never has there been a new dungeon" I said in shock.
"The scouts know these forests like the back of their hands. They know a new dungeon when they see it. With my inability to leave the heart in fear of attack from the dungeon, I have no choice but to rely on their reports. I trust them" she reassured me. Although with this development I'm not entirely sure I'm reassured at all.
"Have the scouts entered yet?" I inquired
"Only a couple. Inside they reported beings with strange energies inside them. Normally all creatures in Ardenweald have a certain amount of mana in them. It's what allows them to be so strong. However these creatures are filled with an unknown energy" the queen explained.
"That's very interesting, how long since this dungeon was found?" I asked with excitement. I loved anything related to magic. Not only would I be experiencing a new form of it, I would also get to be one of the first to explore this new dungeon.
"Not long. We found the dungeon a few days ago, however the dungeon could have been around some time longer" said the Queen.
"What should we do about it?" I asked, hoping she'd send me there to explore.
"Thankfully the dungeon was discovered on a small island on the northernmost part of Ardenweald. It hasn't had a chance to spew any creatures out to attack the surroundings. However it will still need more investigation before we announce that we have found a new dungeon." she said with some relief.
"If I may…" I started
"Yes I am well aware of your penchant for magic and adventure. The first thing you did all those years ago when you first got to Ardenweald was explore every inch of the forests. Yes you may enter the dungeon. But be careful!" she said with both a grin and affection in her voice.
"Thank you, my Lady." I said with almost childlike glee.
As I just about sprinted away with excitement, still managing to control myself, I barely heard the queen say behind me "oh Alex, please never change. But I hope this isn't the last i see of you"
Exiting the main tree that was the heart of the forest, I summoned my Dreadsteed. A violet magic circle gathered beneath me, tendrils of magic flowing upward. After a couple seconds of casting, a pillar of flame exploded upward beside me and left molten cracks in the ground originating out from the fire. Out from the flames stepped a massive jet black warhorse, easily 3 feet taller than me at his head. The horse was covered in fiery red steel battle armor, easily capable of stopping arrows, magic, and damn near everything one could throw at it.
The armor was segmented along his neck, hips and shoulders allowing him to move as if he had no armor on at all. He had a fiery mane, and flames exited his nostrils when he breathed; none of his fire hurt me at all, but he could burn an average adult to ash if they attempted to ride without his permission. His hooves were also on fire, leaving fiery footsteps in the ground as he ran; if he wished he could extinguish his flames on his feet if stealth was a requirement.
Even if stealth wasn't needed, the flaming prints would go out after a few minutes anyway, so he wouldn't burn down the forest. Lastly he had several horns jutting out from around his body, two from either side of his temples, two coming up from the top of his head, and one on each of his shoulders sweeping back to form a sort of block from some attacks. Thankfully none of his horns impeded his movement.
"Hey boy, how are you doing? Ready for a good run?" I asked. Most people don't name their mounts for some reason, but I decided to. I thought the name Hellfire fit him quite perfectly.
Hellfire whinnied at me; puffing his flames from his nose on my hand had I went to pet between his eyes. He loved running almost as much as I loved magic; and considering he had endless stamina, he could run for quite some time.
"Hellfire, you must get the Master to her destination as fast as possible. Nothing will keep our lady from her fun!" Aztog said to the horse, waving goodbye to me.
Aztog knew that he was going to be unsummoned soon. I loved the little guy but he wasn't combat oriented like some of my other minions. He could fight, without a doubt; most creatures would be no match for him in ranged combat, but he was no tank. When I was flying solo I used my Wrathguard; Arax'arad. Or Arax for short. I mainly summoned Aztog for companionship when I wasn't in combat.
"Thank you Aztog, I will be off and i will see you in a while." I said as I dismissed him back to his homeworld of Argus. I then hopped on Hellfire and we were off.
The ride to the new dungeon took some time, as it was on the very edge of the forest. With Hellfire carrying me, the forest blurred passed. Some random creatures tried half heartedly to attack us on our way, but with a flick of the wrist they died to my Shadowbolt. After a few hours or so of riding, we finally got to the forest's edge; beyond which was just a misty void that went down for miles and miles. On the edge of the mists, you could just barely see the tops of some trees; such trees must have been truly colossal to reach that high.
Across the void I could see the island the Winter Queen was talking about, and upon it was the swirling blue portal all dungeons had, with raids having green. Thankfully since the portal was blue, it meant I could easily clear the dungeon without any allies. Most people couldn't do that, they needed others to help them; with the help of my demons I could do almost anything by myself. There were exceptions of course like raids, and the truly powerful mythic dungeons.
The void didn't stop hellfire in the least as he simply jumped, and started sprinting in the air. Each step leaving a floating hoofprint in the air that would vanish after about 30 seconds. Hellfire isn't classified as a flying mount, so while he can do short bursts of flying like he was right now, he's not as fast as an actual flying mount, nor could he do it indefinitely. The sprint across the void only lasted about 5 minutes, so we were over rather quickly compared to the journey here. Upon landing on the island I immediately dismounted hellfire and took stock of my surroundings.
There wasn't a whole lot; the hostile and strange magic coming from the portal had scorched the land barren except for all but the heartiest of trees. In my initial exploration of Ardenweald, this island was lush and full of life just like the rest of the forests. It was strange and mildly depressing to see such a beautiful place turned to such a state. What was also strange was that the portal had done this at all, every portal i'd seen to date was completely harmless to its surroundings.
"Thank you hellfire, you've been a great help, but the going's gonna get rough from here on out. I'll see you next time." I said to the steed with a smile. I gave him some more scratches behind his ears and unsummoned him. While he could help in combat, when compared to my actual combat demons he paled in comparison.
'Well let's get this show on the road' I thought to myself and prepared the spell to summon my Wrathguard. It was similar to the summoning of Hellfire, except that it took some time longer and a small bright green and almost infinitely black void appeared beside me. The void was about the size of a child's ball, and would expand to a full on swirling portal of different shades of light and dark green colors, with the black void in the very center. Out of the portal stepped my Wrathguard demon in all his glory.
"Greetings, my master" Arax'arad said in his almost impossibly deep voice that was booming off the surroundings, while immediately kneeling. The eerie portal blinking out of existence behind him.
"Hey there Arax, been a while hasn't it?" I said to him fondly. He's saved my ass countless times over the years. I'd be lost without his protection.
Arax'arad, or just Arax for short, was a towering behemoth. He was easily twice my height, my head only coming up to his waist; eye level with his… heh, manhood. The average human was about 6 foot tall (1.8 meters), and as a void elf, I was only a bit shorter at around 5 foot 10 (1.7 meters). Arax was a 12 foot tall (3.6 meter) monster of a demon. He had silvery gray skin, but you couldn't see most of it beneath his suit of head to toe armor. The only place his black with gold trim armor was absent was where his reverse-joint knees met his digitigrade feet.
The armor continued down to his wickedly clawed feet. He had a long muscular prehensile tail that ended in a massive bladed club. I'd never thought to ask him if the blades were part of his tail, or added as an extra weapon. The armor itself was mostly segmented plates allowing for movement, with several blades in strategic places allowing for more options to attack. The only piece of heavy plate armor that had some ornamental things was his helmet, which had some deadly looking horns coming from the side, and another pair sweeping behind his head.
"Who are the unlucky souls who we are to face today?" he asked as his emerald green eyes glowed and flashed with excitement.
"A new dungeon opened up, and we are to clear it of any danger, so the scouts and scribes can come document the discovery" I told him.
"I'm all for crushing some weaklings, but that scholar shit bores me to tears" he said with some disgust on his face.
"Heh, sometimes I get bored of it too, shall we go?" I said as I sent him forward. He is my tank after all, he rushes forward and smashes face while I hang out in the rear raining death and destruction on those attacking him.
"Of course, my Lady" he saluted and charged through the portal, with me close behind.
The inside of the portal was nothing spectacular; mainly a large stone tunnel. Thankfully it was big enough to accommodate Arax; I never really thought about it until now, but most dungeons were big enough to have my minions fit. Not long after we entered we came upon our first enemy: a lone brown wolf.
"That's it? A puny wolf?" Arax said to himself with some disappointment.
"Don't underestimate anything here. We have no idea the powers this strange energy gives the users" I warned him.
As I finished talking, I sent him forward commanding him to attack and imbuing a bit of mana into him. He covered the 40 foot distance to the wolf in less than a second and slashed out with his massive battleaxe. Right after I sent him in I began casting Shadowbolt, my hands glowing with purple and abyssal smoke. The shadowy black and violet swirling lance of energy landing at the same time as his swing. The poor wolf apparently didn't stand a chance; despite the direwolves' size, he was cut in half by Arax's attack, and then turned to smokey ash by mine.
"Well that was anticlimactic" I said.
"Agreed" he told me.
"Well that can't be all for a dungeon in the shadowlands, let's continue" I ordered.
As we continued on we encountered many wolves. They seemed to be just ordinary wolves, not empowered by the dungeons as I had grown accustomed to which was very odd. What they did have was the strange energy that the winter queen had told me about. As far as I could tell, it was similar to mana; the energy source I used with one key difference. Mana came from everywhere you looked, and entered the body from the environment. As one gained more experience and got more powerful, you could hold more and more before the mana just passed you by. There were a few spells such as what the druids and mages could use to recover mana, but everyone else had to have it happen naturally if you didn't consume food to do so. However you could only eat food when you weren't in combat.
This other energy however, seemed to be generated inside the body, and not taken from the outside world. That was the only thing I could tell besides some of its effects. It seemed to give the wolves a greater sense of smell than normal wolves, they seemed stronger and more agile as well. It was weird, all of these wolves just seemed to have normal animal smarts, whereas any animal outside this dungeon that could use mana needed a certain level of intelligence to be capable of doing so. To further understand this energy, more research, study, and experiments would be required. One other thing I noticed after observing the wolves using their energy was that it seemed to recover much slower than my mana.
My mana would recover to full in about half an hour, where it seemed these creatures didn't recover their energy at all until they had rested some. From what I could tell the energy came back to them at different rates, the same as normal humans have different rates they recover their stamina from exercising. I was curious what would happen if I used my Drain Life spell on them, but now is not the time to experiment. I needed to kill the boss of this dungeon before fucking around; there was no telling how powerful it was and i needed all my strength to fight it.
After exploring, and killing many wolves, we came across what could be described as a boss room, except there was nothing there. Normally the boss is just sitting there, waiting for challengers to come and fight.
"Be careful Arax, I don't like this. Proceed with caution." I told my demon.
"Of course master." he replied and slowly walked forward.
Annnndd… nothing happened. No traps springing out of the walls, no rumbling, no crazed monster rushing out claiming we killed its family and wanting revenge. It was all so strange, unlike any dungeon I've been in before. It wasn't about until we got to the other side of the room that something happened. As we were about to get to the wall, we finally felt a rumbling; but nothing to be overly concerned about. These walls looked sturdy. That was until I looked back and saw that the entrance had collapsed. Now that was what I had expected, but still no enemies to fight.
The only other thing that happened was that the room started to shake more and more, along with getting hotter and hotter. The heat was no big deal for me, after all I controlled shadows, fire, and brimstone for fun, however the shaking was worrying. Finally the room started shaking so much that the floor couldn't take it. Cracks started appearing everywhere, slowly starting to grow into big fissures in the ground. Bright blue light started to come from the floor in the center of the room; more and more light poured out as the cracks in the floor got bigger.
Arax jumped in front of me ready to attack anything that moved. I appreciated the gesture, I really did but I didn't think he could do anything about this. With all my power I couldn't bend reality; maybe a mage could but don't think even one of them could turn back time far enough to stop themselves from dying. Finally the cracks got big enough that I could see the source of the light coming from the floor. A massive portal that I was going to fall into no matter what I did. Portals weren't uncommon in dungeons, after all they often took you to a different part of the dungeon, however I had never seen a portal this colossal before.
"I… am fucked" I said to Arax.
"Whatever may come, Alex, I shall stand with you" He said as he scooped me up, cradling me in one arm while holding his weapon in the other.
If I wasn't so old I might be embarrassed at being carried like a sack of potatoes, but honestly I just found comfort in it. Having his massive body shielding me from whatever might come; if I was honest with myself it was the only thing keeping me from freaking out. I was still anxious as hell, since I had no idea what was coming, but having one of my demons with me made it bearable.
It was then that the floor finally crumbled, and we couldn't stand anymore. We had tried climbing the walls, but there was no purchase to be had on them, almost like it was intentional. After consideration it probably was, to force the room's occupants to fall. After some liberal swearing at the situation I found myself in, Arax and I hit the portal and all I could see was blue light.
The only thing I could feel was pain. All encompassing pain. I didn't think i'd felt pain this bad before, and believe me I knew pain. It felt like the hottest fires from the demon lord Sargeras' Tomb were eating away at my soul. Thankfully I knew my soul well and could tell it wasn't being eroded away, but it was changing. I could also tell my body was being changed, reconstructed to be something else. After what felt like an eternity, I could finally tell what my body was doing; it was being merged with my soul, providing fuel for… something.
I didn't know how long I sat there in pain, waiting for death. I was expecting one of the Kyrian to take me to see the arbiter any time now, the way mortals are supposed to enter the shadowlands. No one came; but I could feel that I was drifting somewhere. I couldn't see anything, but I knew I was moving. Not entirely sure how I could feel that without a body. Finally the pain ended and my soul stabilized, before starting to shrink. It had gained quite a bit of size and mass from my body being added to it, and now it looked like it was losing what it had gained.
It was shrinking at an alarming rate and I was worried that it would vanish completely before I got to wherever I was headed. As it turned out, it wasn't long before I got to my destination. Well actually I had no idea how long it was, since I had no frame of reference for time. Eventually, I started hearing a low, rhythmic thump, and started feeling enclosed in something. Before I didn't feel anything but pain, but now I felt like I was floating. I didn't have a body yet, but was still feeling all this. Eventually I lost what "consciousness" I had and I knew no more.
I woke to screaming. And being cold. What a strange combination. I still couldn't see much, but at least I could see even if everything was blurry as hell. It took me some time to realize the screaming was coming from me. What the hell? Why was I screaming? There was nothing to scream about other than being cold. I tried to stop screaming but no matter what I did, I couldn't. It was then I could feel something grabbing me. I hoped to all hell it was Arax holding me, at least if it was one of my demons i could order them to shut the fuck up and never tell a soul that i was screaming like a baby.
The thing holding me was moving me, to where I had no clue. I felt some scratchy ass fabric being put around me and I felt warmth for the first time since I woke up. I was finally able to stop crying and I relished in the silence. I felt like I was passed to something else, equally as massive, and I still couldn't see for shit. What the hell, I usually healed pretty quick so I should at least be able to see. God I hope I wasn't blind; being blind would suck ass, well more blind. My eyes function but everything is blurry and I can't focus on anything. My other senses weren't great either, they all worked, but worked as if I was under water; muffled. I could hear what sounded like voices, but from far away and indistinct. I could smell, but I couldn't distinguish smells. The only one of my senses that seemed to be somewhat functional was touch, even then it seemed hyper sensitive. All of this new shit was kind of overwhelming and I found myself falling asleep again.
Some time later, not sure how long, I woke up again and I could at least see a tiny bit better. I could only see my hand in front of my face and that was when my hand was basically touching my face. The hand I saw made me panic. It wasn't my hand. My hand should have been light blue, slender and elegant, with calloused parts and scars from battle. Instead the hand was small, chubby, and the normal white-peachy of a human. The panic made me pass out again. This was getting annoying, I never passed out this much.
That cycle of waking up for a few minutes and passing out again went on for some time, each time I was able to see a little bit better. So it seemed I wasn't blind, my eyes were just healing from whatever damage had caused it. Every day I thought about that tiny hand. There's no way it was mine, I'd experienced a lot of things in my time, but being in another's body wasn't one of them. The thought of somehow being in another creature's body made me panic, and once again, I passed out. Damn it, what was wrong with me? I was starting to realize that most of the time I wasn't passing out, but falling asleep; it felt like passing out because I was so exhausted. Everything was tiring, even just laying here.
Unsure of how long passed, I was finally able to see enough that I could see where I lay. It was a crib. What? As I was pondering that new impossibility, I felt the ground shake in a steady beat, and it brought up memories of the cave I had fallen into and I started to shake.
"Soko no chīsana ko, subete daijōbu, kowagaru hitsuyō wa arimasen" I heard someone say.
What the hell kinda language was that? I knew every language of azeroth and that was not one of them.
"Dewa, o ryōri o dōzo" the same voice said.
I felt myself being picked up, and as I looked, a giant face came into view. Holy shit. The only creatures that size were gods, and they mostly looked monstrous, and angelic. This lady looked neither. She looked… normal. And she was carrying me around with great care. Gods don't do that. Given everything that had happened so far, there was only one conclusion I could come to.
I was a god damned infant… somehow.
A/N: I apologize for the google translate Japanese, but I couldn't find anywhere other than there that I could get the English alphabet Japanese rather than Kanji.
