This chapter comes a bit late on account of its size and the fact that the actions scenes gave me some trouble.

Thanks go to Joe Lawyer and Umodin for beta-reading and lore advisory, respectively.

XXXXX

Harry did not like having so many guests. Just the thought of all those people near his workshop was enough to give him conniptions. Even worse was the thought of a permanent portal at the edge of enemy territory leading right to his tower. However, he understood the value of morale, so he sucked it up and dealt with it. Precautions were taken and off-limits areas were designated, which would have to suffice as a preventative measure.

But seeing as temporal shenanigans were too great a military advantage to not be used again, he promised himself to build a dedicated facility for it somewhere else. Maybe in the Windshear Crag in the Stonetalon Mountains. That had been one of his options for a tower location and it would let him screw over the goblins at the same time.

Needlessly spiteful? Maybe, but from what he gathered the night elves, tauren and even the orcs (or at least the shamans among them) were pissed off at what the greedy little bastards had done to that valley, so it wasn't just spite motivating his choices.

But for the moment, he set aside one empty room in the time dilated part of the tower for the space-expanded tents and then set about improvising some amenities. Things like a large basin for group bathing and a sort of picnic area outside.

It worked surprisingly well, all things considered.

There were a number orcs in the Kor'kron that hailed from the Warsong Clan and they had been out of contact with the rest of the Horde since coming to Silithus with Saurfang. They hadn't been pleased when they learned what Harry had done to the Warsong in Ashenvale.

On the other hand, the night elf Sentinels who had been similarly incommunicado were very pleased and immediately retracted any objection they had to learning that he had built his tower in their ancestral forest.

The simmering tension between the two groups briefly threatened to boil over, before their respective commanders reminded them that they had decided to bury that hatchet until after the qiraji were taken care of.

Being taken away from the immediate war front might have let that truce slip their minds even with the glares of their commanders, but none of them wanted to lose Harry's hospitality. There were few things more precious to a soldier at war than the chance at a guaranteed good night's sleep, access to bathing facilities and meals that weren't just military rations.

It helped that they regularly fought together against the bugs in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, which was a slow, grinding process. Just fully fortifying that first large chamber took a solid two days, what with needing to burn out the smaller side tunnels while fending off regular raids from the larger one that presumably led deeper into the hive. To say nothing of the burrowers that occasionally tried to surprise them.

But progress was being made. Eventually, the shamans managed to build up enough of a rapport with the local earth spirits to hinder the burrowers and the dwarven engineers managed to lock down the area to such an extent that mere silithid were no longer a serious threat.

Once Saurfang felt that they were secure enough to push deeper in without leaving themselves vulnerable, the vanguard was reassembled.

XXXXX

"We have explored the tunnels leading out of this chamber." Lynore Windstryke was saying, gesturing to the newly map she and her scouts had created. "Most of them are either dead ends, works in progress or end with bug holes too small to safely traverse, but that one," she pointed to a particular one. "leads to some kind of large hall that ends in another chamber similar to this one, just significantly larger."

"Then we can use the same strategy." Saurfang nodded. "Push forward carefully and be wary of ambush."

"I would not be too certain of that." Lynore warned. "The 'hall' has five parallel paths, separated by wall sections approximately twenty feet thick. These walls have openings at the top that fliers could use to pass through them and passages on the bottom every couple of hundred feet."

"A gauntlet." Von Zeldig said, rubbing at his bearded chin thoughtfully. "Designed to force any invading army to divide itself, as any of the paths that we ignore become too easy a staging point for enemy attack. Clever of the beasts."

"And if any group moves too fast or too slow, it leaves its flanks open." Malagav added. "Under a competent commander, the fliers would harry certain groups more than others, to ensure just that outcome."

Harry opened his mouth to speak, but Saurfang pointed a finger at him.

"Don't say it." The old orc warned. "Instead of making stupid puns, how about you tell me if you have any tricks up your sleeve to counter the challenge we expect to face."

"When it comes to puns, the line between stupid and clever is thin indeed." Harry replied sagely. "And I have this thing."

He pulled a weapon from hammerspace, clearly identifiable as a gun, but not one that was familiar to them.

"What is it?" Foehammer asked eagerly.

"A grenade launcher. Semi-automatic, with a fifty round space-expanded magazine." Harry replied casually, aiming it at a wall. "Observe."

He fired three times without fanfare, but instead explosions what burst from the shells was a cloud of thick powder that slowly floated upwards. It startled a few people, but once they saw what the source was they shrugged it off.

"That gunk will stick to anything it touches and then harden. I made this to counter swarms of fliers down here, since I wouldn't have the chance to set up another lantern net." Harry explained.

"A grenade… launcher." Foehammer repeated, sounding as if he had just received a divine revelation. "A gun that fires grenades."

"That sounds like it would work." Saurfang nodded, ignoring the dwarf. "How many do you have?"

"One. I didn't expect that we would need to split the party."

"Can you make more?"

Harry sighed. He had already needed to make more flamethrower fuel and goop grenades. Making more grenade launchers, shells and lighter-than-air quick-dry powder was going to add to his workload considerably. "I suppose."

"Good, because the alternative would have been to rely entirely on the mages to protect us from air attacks while we advanced and we will probably need their powers to face whatever is waiting for us in the next chamber." Saurfang admitted.

"We will not be able to retreat from that battle." Malagav noted.

"Indeed, with the nature of the gauntlet as well as the speed of the qiraji and their silithid pets, it would be all too easy for them to run us down if we tried." Von Zeldig concurred.

"Hmmm." Saurfang let out a grumbling hum. "Windstryke, do you have any intelligence on what is waiting for us in that chamber?"

"No." Lynore frowned, obviously displeased by her own answer. "There were too many worker drones swarming through the passages to sneak through. Harry's telescope helped me see across it, but the ground slopes downwards and the ceiling opens upwards. The only thing I could see were more of these." She gestured at one of the strange semi-organic growths extending from the roof that vaguely resembled massive tree roots.

"Crap." Harry swore. "I hate going into a situation blind."

"As any sane warrior does, but faith and courage will see us through the darkness of uncertainty." Von Zeldig declared optimistically, slapping a hand across the wizard's back.

Harry stared at his grinning face for a moment before replying. "Indeed, none will be able to withstand the power of teamwork and cooperation!"

"YES!" The paladin roared, either oblivious to the sarcasm or deliberately ignoring it. He walked off and started readying his men, who were obviously sporting looks of fond exasperation at their commander's antics.

"That guy is way too much like Luna sometimes." Harry muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.

XXXXX

"Show me what passes for fury among your misbegotten kind!" Harry shouted, firing grenades at the swarms of silithid wasps and qiraji battleguard.

He would never admit to the fact that he had spent over an hour meditating and digging through the dusty confines of his early memory for appropriate quotes. Space Marines might not have been the focus of his fascination with Warhammer 40,000, but there was a cool factor to them that appealed to him as a male rather than as a wizard.

"Let the grenades fly!"

"Burn! For the Bronzebeards!" And the dwarves were getting in on it too.

A little further back, Luna smiled, glad to see that they were having a good time. It was even helping with overall morale.

With the cloud of quick-dry powder choking the ceiling, the battleguard and wasp units were finding their delicate wings encased in a cement-like coating and crashing to the ground. They were making excellent progress and there had only been one incident of a dwarf with a flamethrower shooting in the air!

That had been bad and the dwarf in question had his toy confiscated, much to his disappointment.

On the other end of things, Battleguard Sartura, leader of the qiraji battleguard, was struggling to keep hold of her temper. The Twin Emperors had personally charged her with punishing these defilers for daring to trespass on the temple's sacred ground and challenging the laws of the Ancients.

That was proving unexpectedly difficult. The invaders were much more varied in their tactics than the night elf armies a thousand years past and Sartura had no counter to the strange powder that crippled the wings of her underlings.

Much as it galled her, she was forced to let them progress to her main chamber.

She turned to one of her royal guard, face twisted into an angry sneer behind her veil. "Get ready to lure Fankriss here. We will see how their petty tricks work on him!"

XXXXX

The five separate columns of the Might of Kalimdor moved through the gauntlet like a meat grinder. A flaming meat grinder. With the closed nature of the passages, the grenade launchers were highly effective and so were the flamethrowers. Much of the army was able to stay in reserve, only intervening occasionally.

Yet Saurfang's suspicion only grew. Though the attacks on them did not abate completely, they certainly lost a great deal of vigor. One could assume that the battleguard leading their silithid minions had seen that their trap had been turned against them and chose to not fight in a disadvantageous position, but he was not willing to do that. If an enemy wasn't desperate then they probably still had some tricks held back, and the qiraji did not feel desperate to him.

That was why he began shouting orders for everyone to reform back into a single group as soon as they made it out of the gauntlet.

A difficult thing to do quickly even at the best of times, much worse when you were still being attacked by swarms of silithid soldier drones, wasps and harassed by qiraji battleguard. They weren't even halfway done when a much bigger problem came charging at them.

"Sand reaver!" Came the shout of warning and Saurfang turned to look as the huge beast, even bigger than the one they'd killed outside, emerged from a large tunnel and went straight for them.

This was really bad. Unlike what they had done outside, they couldn't leave most of their army behind while a few people with the right skills stepped forth to deal with it. They couldn't even retreat back into the passages of the gauntlet, because while huge, the sand reaver could still fit into them.

It would have no space to turn around until it reached the previous chamber, which was probably why it hadn't been sent in earlier, but fighting it in that narrow corridor would have been a death sentence. Saurfang was not about to sacrifice a fifth of their best fighters just to inconvenience that thing.

"Harry, the sand reaver!" He shouted and turned to swing his axe at the approaching line of soldier drones, taking the front legs off three of them.

Not for the first time, he was grateful for the odd archmage's presence. As aggravating as the man could be, he was also very useful. Even more than the advanced weaponry he supplied and his meddling with time to allow the army more rest, was the simple fact that he had an understanding of tactics and strategy.

While all the other mages in the army were either adventurers or Kirin Tor field agents, they still lacked the experience that would let them take in the battlefield at a glance and simply know where their powers would be of most use. They would have needed more than to simply be pointed at a problem.

To be fair, that was a problem that many orcs also suffered from. Superior strategy and tactics had always been one the main advantages humans had over them in their wars. But Saurfang knew how to deal with orcs, mages he was less used to.

XXXXX

Harry did not need Saurfang's orders to know that he would have to deal with the sand reaver. The battlefield was too crowded and chaotic for the same tactic to work on this one as the one outside, and every other part of the army was already too engaged to take on the added burden. Serious casualties would be incurred if they tried.

First things first, it had to be prevented from actually reaching them. If that happened, they would be forced to scatter and that would make the press of the silithid drones exponentially more dangerous.

The sand reaver was barreling forward at full speed, lesser silithid fleeing before it. Deciding to take a page out of Jaina's playbook, he lashed out with frost magic, encasing the sand reaver's legs in blocks of ice. Knowing that it would only buy him a few seconds, he immediately followed it up by transfiguring the sand into a field of sharp spikes.

As expected, the huge bug didn't take long to break the ice on its legs and resume its skittering advance. Harry hoped that the spikes would give it some pause, but the sand reaver didn't even slow down. Despite hardening the spikes as much as he could with his magic, the chitinous underbelly was still too heavily armored for that to work. The spikes of sand broke like they were made of glass.

Clenching his teeth in frustration at stupid levels of resilience, Harry quickly considered his options. If it was a one on one battle, he could have simply taken to the air and punched through its magic resistant hide at leisure, but he couldn't do that right now without leaving the rest of the army out to dry, not to mention getting swamped by countless flying nuisances.

…swamped? Well, there was an idea. That spell was a huge power hog, but Azeroth should be more forgiving and it would solve the problem quite handily. It had been sitting on his list of impractical spells for centuries, a list he had been reviewing in light of this dimension's magic-rich nature.

Fuck it, there wasn't any time to think of a more optimal solution, so Harry began gathering power for the spell and weaving the parameters as quickly as he dared. It had been a long time since he'd done this and he couldn't risk a screw up or they'd all be in deep shit.

He didn't notice the other mages and more magic sensitive people around him shying away from the rising concentration of magic around him or the budding panic as the sand reaver resumed its charge. There could be no distractions.

"Swamp of Dirac." He intoned, letting the spell go. The orb of brownish-green light sailed forward and gently impacted the sand just in front of the sand reaver.

The ground immediately became a soggy mess of quicksand. It sucked at the giant bug's arachnid-type legs, more voracious than normal quicksand should be and deeper than physics should allow.

As the name implied, the Swamp of Dirac created a swamp, but it was no mere transfiguration. Instead, the spell took the topmost layer of the ground within its area of effect was cast on and liquified it. That layer of liquified ground then became a gateway to an imaginary space filled with an infinite amount of the same gunk.

It had very little to do with the theories of physicist Paul Dirac, but that was where he'd got the idea for it so that was how he named it.

Harry winced at the throb of pain in his skull that warned him he had channeled more power than was safe, but at least it wasn't the head-splitting agony that had rendered him comatose for two days back on Earth. He could still remember the epic scolding he had received afterwards.

But he had to take a moment to goggle incredulously at the sand reaver, which had caught itself on the edge of the swamp with its scissor-like tail and very back pair of legs and immediately began attempting to pull itself out. Fortunately, no matter what kind of magical bullshittery was allowing it to violate the laws of physics to even exist, its front half was much too heavy for that to work. At least, on its own.

"Contact all." He said to the magic microphone now inside his helmet. "Girls, we need to get Arko to the back of the sand reaver so that she can chop off its tail. Over."

With the awkward angle, its magic resistance, the sheer number of minor enemies in the way and his borderline magical exhaustion from casting the Swamp of Dirac, he wouldn't be able to do it alone.

XXXXX

Battleguard Sartura fumed in outrage when she saw what one of the enemy archmages had done to Fankriss the Unyielding. The great sand reaver was a champion of the Ancients, an instrument of C'thun's will. This indignity was an insult to the Old Gods.

"Get over there and pull him out of that swamp." She ordered her underlings.

XXXXX

"Contact all." Jessir grunted. "And how do you propose we do that, Harry? The four of us can't wade through all those enemies!"

"An opportunity will present itself." He replied confidently. "And you forgot to say 'over' when you were done talking. Over."

Unseen by all beneath her helmet, Jessir rolled her eyes. She might intellectually understand why making it clear that someone was done talking was important, but it still seemed a little silly.

"I can clear the way for you, but only briefly." Luna said, much more seriously than normal. "You'll have to hurry. Over."

"The qiraji are moving to help the sand reaver." Jessir reported, before spotting a battleguard that looked like she was surrounded by an honor guard and giving orders. "I see the leader!"

"There is our opportunity, their attention will be split! Arko, are you ready? Over." Harry asked.

"Ready!" Her friend grunted, clearly in the midst of combat.

"Then let's go!"

Jessir had already been aiming her shot and fired the arrow when he said that. To her frustration, one of the honor guard somehow spotted it and moved to protect her charge with her own body. They were doing their job well, there was no denying that.

"Archers, fire on that battleguard over there!" She shouted to her fellow night elves. If a precision shot wasn't going to work, then maybe weight of fire would.

She was just nocking another arrow when Luna's voice rang in her ears, the human priestess of Elune having apparently forgotten to close the link.

"Consecrated Path."

Jessir felt the staff hit the ground and a rush of holy power burst outward, creating a corridor of gentle silver-blue light. The members of the Might of Kalimdor who stood in it were unharmed, even rejuvenated, but the silithid screeched as if burned.

As much as Jessir would have liked to watch over her friend and Harry as they went to finish off the sand reaver, she had her own job to do. Arrow after arrow was sent towards the battleguard leader. Their blood was apparently different enough that Harry's alchemical explosive didn't work on them, but the adamantine arrowheads still caused grievous wounds to the cloth-garbed bug women.

She just wished that she had something that would take out groups of enemies or punch through them, because what little magical enhancement she could add wasn't quite up to the task.

The honor guard continued to intercept arrows with their bodies when they couldn't dodge, a couple eventually succumbing to accumulated wounds But it seemed that they quickly became fed up with being targets and dove towards her like falcons on the hunt.

Jessir's eyes went wide with slight panic at that development froze in momentary indecision when the dozen or so qiraji battleguard brazenly crashed through the barrier being maintained by the Kirin Tor.

It hurt them, she could see that. Even if it was just a temporary barrier that needed active maintenance instead of an anchored ward, there were consequences for simply forcing one's way through it. Had they been regular battleguard, it would probably have been crippling, but these were the strongest of their kind. Strong enough to endure the backlash and continue on their way with hardly a pause.

Taloned feet and scything hands lashed out at everyone below them, killing and injuring dozens. They took injury in turn as the Might of Kalimdor focused on the threat in their midst, but it didn't deter them from their target.

Jessir tried to duck to escape their reach, to no avail. Powerful talons grabbed her left arm and yanked her into the air, her Holy Moonlight Greatbow left to fall on the ground.

"You dare attack me?!" The battleguard holding her up, whom Jessir now realized was the leader, shrieked in clear outrage. "I sentence you to death!"

Instinctively, the huntress pressed her chin down to protect her neck, which she knew was always the most vulnerable part of any armor. She felt and heard claws screeching as they were dragged across the arcanite plate and knew that her old chainmail and leathers wouldn't have saved her from being shredded.

Any remaining thoughts about the triple-layer armor and helmet Harry insisted she wear being excessive vanished completely. He was going to be insufferably smug about it.

Panic now more manageable since it was clear that she wasn't dead yet, Jessir stopped trying to pry the talons off her left arm and reached down to draw one of her Holy Moonlight Shortswords.

The short blade might not be able to strike with anywhere near as much force as Arko's greatsword, but it was still a weapon of surpassing enchantment and cut deep into the battleguard leader's ankle. There was s screech of pain and then she was falling, the honor guard that had been trying to rip her apart too startled by their leader's injury to grab her in time.

That was a new problem, because Jessir hadn't realized how high up the qiraji had taken her. Now she was falling to her possible death and even if not, she would land well away from any allies. The helplessness of her situation made Jessir scream in fright, hoping that someone would save her.

She wasn't even halfway to the ground when there was a strong yank on her body and she began to fly sideways, back towards the entrance to the chamber where the Might of Kalimdor was concentrated.

"Oof!" Came Luna's mechanically-inflectioned voice as she hit something. "Gotcha!"

"I could kiss you right now." Jessir said shakily, trembling a bit from the back-to-back series of near death experiences. Noticing that she actually still had the battleguard leader's severed foot clamped around her forearm, she pried it off with a noise of disgust.

"Later." Luna replied cheerfully. "First we have to make sure Arko and Harry get back to us."

Jessir looked in their direction and saw the two still running towards the mostly submerged sand reaver along a fading corridor of Elune's power.

"Right." She nodded, holding out her hand and closing her eyes to focus. It took a few seconds, but her Holy Moonlight Greatbow disappeared from wherever it had fallen and materialized back into her hand. It was the very first thing that Harry had taught her to do and possibly the most useful. "I will keep the pressure on the enemy leader."

That was both because her arrows wouldn't be as much use in keeping the swarms at bay and because she really wanted to settle the score with that insectoid bitch that had just tried to kill her.

Luna couldn't help directly either, her job of supporting the army being too important to let up for more than a few moments at a time. She could get other people to do it, though.

"Leoric, could you please put together a rescue party and go after Harry and Arko for me?" She called out sweetly.

For all that he was normally a careful and meticulous man, Harry also had a paradoxical tendency to take risks when he got excited and Azeroth as a whole had him more excited than she'd seen in a very long time.

"I am humbled that you would entrust the safety of your loved ones to me, Lady Priestess!" Von Zeldig shouted back from where he was hacking away at the soldier drones, correctly interpreting that Luna would go by herself if he refused. "Men! Who will charge into the enemy's jaws alongside me?"

"We are with you, Highlord!" Several reckless voices roared back.

Jessir could only agree with Harry's opinion that the man was far too dramatic.

XXXXX

People shouted at her to stop when she bolted away from the defensive formation, but Arko couldn't do that. As terrifying as it was to run towards the enemy mass alone, Harry, Luna and Jessir were relying on her.

Fortunately, she wasn't alone for long, as Harry flew in and landed at her side.

Arko hadn't thought much of his ability to fly at first, simply thinking that it was nothing special for a powerful archmage to do so. That was until the other mages in the Might of Kalimdor began talking about it. Then she learned that such an ability was widely considered to be useless, good only for pointless showboating. More than one mage had approached Harry about it, either to ask how he had made it viable or to condescendingly 'inform' him that there were better ways to spend one's talents.

"Alright, let's do this!" Harry said as soon as his feet touched the ground, then he took an audibly deep breath, clearly preparing to yell something. "LEEEEROY JEEEENKINS!"

Arko nearly tripped over her own feet at the nonsensical bellow. "What?! Who in Elune's name is Leeroy Jenkins, and why are you screaming his name?!"

"Long story, but it had to be done!" He retorted, pulling a black-purple poleaxe with a distinctly draconic theme from his so-called 'hammerspace'.

Harry was actually enjoying himself. The chance to fully exert his powers without any political bullshit getting in the way, the opportunity to pit his cleverness against a monstrous foe, to see his devices and spells in effect, even the challenge of life and death battle… ah, he was really loving life on Azeroth. The only thing that would have made it better was if he could use his staff without people freaking out, but he would get a new one soon enough.

There was a grin on his face the whole time he and Arko ran through Luna's Consecrated Path, occasionally swinging their weapons at a silithid or qiraji that tried to get at them. The corridor of holy moonlight kept most at bay, but some tried their luck.

Harry had to resort to melee since he had so overstretched his magic, but at least the poleaxe he was using was a fine weapon. Made of adamantine mixed with Onyxia's powdered bones, infused with her heart and tempered in her blood. It wasn't as good as a Holy Moonlight weapon, but those needed faith in Elune to use properly and he had none to give.

That being said, he did still have a great deal of appreciation for Azeroth's Moon Goddess. Even now he could feel her rejuvenating him while he and Arko ran along the path blessed by her power. He was going to have to consult Tyrande or some other night elven priestess about what kind of features a temple of Elune needed to have before construction started in Stormwind, because he really wanted to keep this very beneficial working relationship with Elune going.

"Harry, we're going to have to step off the path if we want to cut off that thing's tail!" Arko called out, seeing what the lay of the land looked like.

Of course, Luna hadn't been positioned so optimally that she could give them a straight line right to the sand reaver's hindquarters.

"I have us covered." Harry replied, conjuring a vortex of fire around them. "Move with the eye of the storm."

Thankfully, just calling up a little fire wasn't nearly as taxing as the Swamp of Dirac and Elune's rejuvenating touch had brought him back from the edge of magical exhaustion.

The two of them still had to deal with the occasional wasp, battleguard or soldier drone that managed to leap through the twisting wall of flame, but they generally came through injured and disoriented. Easy prey for blows from either sword or poleaxe.

Harry honestly wished he had a bladestaff. His old one had gotten destroyed during that fracas with R'hllor and he hadn't found anything on Azeroth that he felt would make for a good replacement. While the poleaxe was nice enough, it wasn't a magical focus and he never really intended to keep it for himself.

Mostly, he'd just been experimenting and figured that he could pass off the results as gifts.

The localized firestorm began to warp as they reached the sand raver, its magic-resistant hide not terribly bothered by such unfocused flames. It was, at best, lightly singed.

"There, cut that off and this is over!" He yelled to Arko, pointing at the thick tail.

There had been dozens upon dozens of qiraji battleguard buzzing over the creature, working to heave it out of the Swamp of Dirac. You wouldn't think that such flimy-looking wings would support even them, much less allow them to actually pick anything up, but that was magic for you.

Arko wasted no time and swung her greatsword in a wide arc with a yell, sinking it deep into the appendage.

"Keep chopping!" Harry yelled, Exerting more effort to force his firestorm to expand outward and push the enemies aside. Immediately afterwards, he switched to frost magic and encased them in a thick dome of ice. It wasn't even a moment before they could hear countless impacts as the bugs outside began to chip away at it.

"I'm trying!" Arko roared back in frustration. "This thing's tail is stupidly thick and wide!"

That was certainly true. At their current spot, it was easily ten feet wide and about half as thick, all of it made from dense muscle and steel-hard chitin. Even the Holy Moonlight Greatsword couldn't cut through that easily.

"Well, this is certainly a hairy situation." Harry punned, tearing off his helmet and quickly gulping down a mana potion.

The stuff was worse than the local food for how spaced-out it made him feel, but right now that was exactly what he needed. Elune had helped a bit earlier, but constantly reinforcing the dome of ice around them was wearing him down quickly.

He was really going to have to bother Jaina for some private tutoring on frost magic. Fire or lightning had always been more his speed, but there was something to be said for spells with a greater physical component in a world where everyone had magic resistance.

Plus, it would give him more chances to flirt with her, which was always good.

"I'm sleeping with a man that thinks making stupid puns at a time like this is a good idea." Arko growled, mostly to herself, as she brought her sword around for another chop. "My life used to make sense."

"You have ascended to a level beyond common sense." Harry quipped, putting his helmet back on. "This is the realm of legendary sense."

"That makes no sense at all!"

"You just aren't legendary enough yet. Don't worry, you'll get there eventually."

The banter ended abruptly as the ice dome shattered around them.

XXXXX

Battleguard Sartura was most definitely not happy with the way things were going.

The gauntlet had failed to cull the numbers of the enemy.

There was an excessively powerful night elven priestess using support magic so strong that the defilers were glowing with divine power and the silithid hordes just couldn't break through their defensive lines. All attempts to kill her had ended in failure, as the enemy clearly realized how important she was and were protecting her zealously.

Then there was the excessively powerful night elven sorcerer that had foiled her plan to use Fankriss the Unyielding to overwhelm them, although she had thought that the night elves disdained sorcery. They certainly hadn't used any a thousand years ago. A remnant Highborne, perhaps?

Regardless of what he was, it was clear that he was affiliated with the priestess of the moon that was frustrating their frontal assault, as was the warrior with the big sword running towards Fankriss at his side and the extremely annoying archer that had cut off her foot!

Sartura was still furious about that, but didn't have time to rage, because she was on the verge of failing to uphold the command of the Twin Emperors. She had to do something to turn the situation around, or else she was going to lose this battle.

Throwing herself into the thick of the enemy had been a mistake, no matter how satisfying it would have been to kill that archer. Although they had each slain several of the enemy, her royal guard had also been much diminished in turn.

Further assaulting the main army of the invaders would be too costly to her forces. While the lives of the silithid or even her own subordinates didn't matter, the losses they were taking were too great and they risked failure in the eyes of the Ancients. They needed Fankriss to break their lines.

That left Sartura with only one viable course of action. Kill the sorcerer and the sword-wielding woman that were running towards the sand reaver's back, then pull the great creature out of that swamp.

That annoying archer was still sending arrows her way, however, and she was already wounded. Her missing foot throbbed with pain and blood oozed steadily from the stump. She might very well die if it was not treated, but there was no time for that. Death would be preferable to going before the Twin Emperors and C'thun in disgrace.

Sartura pulled back a sizable portion of the remaining silithid wasps and her battleguard underlings, arranging them as shields. There seemed to be more arrow fire being directed their way with every moment.

Flank relatively secure, she dived at the dome of ice that the foolish magic user thought would protect him. It may have been enough to keep out the lesser servants of the Old Ones, but she was Sartura, first of the battleguard! The ice shattered beneath her foot and she took a briefest of moments to take in the situation.

Fankriss' tail was horribly mangled, but not yet severed. The sorcerer had clearly been guarding the warrior's back while she did that. Both were startled by the destruction of their icy barricade.

"Kill them!" She commanded her minions and they fell upon the trespassers with a vengeance.

The sorcerer swung his polearm to ward off the attack, clearly still trying to defend his companion, the fool. They all valued their service to C'thun more than their lives. It didn't matter if the first ones to rush at him died, the weapon carving through their bodies with ease, that just meant that the next ones in line were upon him before he could bring it back into position.

Sartura brought her scythe-like hands down on his shoulders while her cohorts grabbed his polearm, but to her great annoyance, the armor proved as impenetrable as the one that the archer had been wearing. No matter where she dragged her claws, she simply could not find an opening. Even his throat was protected by a gorget made in such a way that it was impossible to simply slide her claws along the armor and into his neck.

Before she could try wiggling her claws into the space between the helmet and gorget, he rose up with an angry roar and a wave of force pushed them all back.

Sartura had another moment to reasses the situation. More of her royal guard had fallen trying to bring these two down, slain by their powerful weapons and that just infuriated Sartura further. Not their loss, but their failure.

"You will die night elves, for the glory of the Old Ones!" She declared and rushed back in, more than willing to sacrifice every last underling she had and herself on top of it to do just that.

The male tilted his head to the side even as he raised his hand in a warding gesture. "I'm not a night elf, get your eyes checked. Solar Flare!"

Sartura had not feared whatever spell he was preparing to cast, nor did she pause at his denial or the strange inflection his helmet gave his voice. She did, pause, however, at the explosion of intolerably bright light that seared her eyes.

She cried out in pain and flew up instinctively, trying to blink away the temporary blindness so that she could get back to the task of killing the trespassers.

But she had forgotten about that archer that seemed to have it out for her, a fact that she was reminded of when an arrow pierced her throat sideways.

Sartura fell to the ground choking on her own blood, knowing that this was a fatal wound. She had failed C'thun and the Twin Emperors, but maybe her subordinates could still finish it. That archer couldn't get them all.

"Are you still making puns?!" The female shouted disbelievingly. Sartura still couldn't see anything, especially from the ground, but judging by the sounds of flesh being cut and shrieks of pain, that huge sword was cutting apart her battleguard.

"How about sexual innuendo?" The sorcerer retorted flippantly. Sartura felt him casting something, but her perception was slowly fading into darkness. "Did you see her deepthroating that shaft all wrong? What an absolute failure as a woman."

This was truly the worst way to die.

XXXXX

Leoric von Zeldig was in an ebullient mood. The Might of Kalimdor had pushed through the endless hordes of the enemy with skill and valor, its many races working together against an evil that threatened to drown Azeroth in eternal darkness. He had witnessed many great acts of heroism today, which bolstered his spirit and hope for the future, allowing him to draw ever deeper on the Holy Light.

When Lady Luna had asked him to go reinforce her husband and… lover? Honestly, Leoric was not sure what kind of relationship those four had and was too polite to ask despite his curiosity. Anyway, When Lady Luna had asked him to go reinforce them, he had been more than happy to grant her request.

He had been prepared to gather a force of paladins and stand in that great sand reaver's way to prevent it from trampling all over their neat defensive line, but Harry's intervention had spared him that need and allowed him to continue blocking the tide of insects from reaching the more vulnerable ranged combatants. It would be disgraceful to leave the powerful archmage and budding paladin to fight on their own.

Fortunately, the enemy leader had clearly been enraged by what they were doing and the pressure on their front lines let up, so Leoric and his quickly-gathered force of paladins had little trouble cutting their way through.

They arrived just as the sand reaver began sinking into the conjured swamp. Harry and Arko were doing their best to fight their way back, but it was clear that they were only alive thanks to those magnificent suits of arcanite plate they were wearing. The archmage was obviously tired, as he was conserving his spells for moments of true need and relying on a poleaxe to do battle – something that impressed Leoric, as few mages ever bothered to learn how to wield a weapon – while Arko had almost completely abandoned skillful swordplay in favor of simply carving through the hordes assaulting them.

"Smite these creatures!" He roared, calling upon the Holy Light. "For Azeroth!"

His roared back in agreement and hammers of Light crashed down upon the horde of monstrous insects. They followed it up immediately by attacking physically, driving the worse of the insects away and forming a small defensive shell.

"Thanks." Harry shouted over the screeching as they moved back. "I may have slightly underestimated the danger and things were becoming uncomfortably hirsute."

"It was a courageous act and spared us much trouble." Leoric was not going to scold a man for being heroic, even if what he did was pretty reckless.

"You just had to slip in another pun, didn't you?" Lady Arko growled darkly.

It took Leoric a moment to figure out what she was talking about, then he had to resist an amused snort at the play on words. What an unusual wizard, he was as arrogant as any powerful archmage, but had such a low-brow sense of humor.

"Highlord, the enemy is breaking!" One of his men pointed out.

It was true, any kind of cohesion among the insects was falling apart and now they seemed to just be attacking whatever was closest. Overall, this was a good thing, but it presented something of a problem for them in particular.

Namely, many of the bugs that had previously been pushing towards the front line of the Might of Kalimdor had now turned to them. They were taking tremendous casualties by doing this, but could very well bury them under a tide of bodies before they were all killed off.

"Trust in the Light, men!" Leoric yelled, raising his sword high. "This will not be our end!"

His fellow paladins closed ranks and braced themselves to endure for as long as they needed to, but Leoric noticed the frustrated body language of their only night elven comrade and well remembered what it was like to be a neophyte. He remembered the doubts and fears that had kept him from grasping the Holy Light properly.

"Lady Arko, Elune is with you!" He shouted towards her. "She will always be there to help you protect all that you hold dear! Simply reach out and accept that help!"

Leoric didn't know much about Elune, but he did know that she was a benevolent goddess, so how much different from the Holy Light could she really be?

There was no more time for pontificating as the enemy crashed into them. Holy Light and powerful spells kept fended them off, then Leoric heard Arko give a wordless cry of effort and a blade of moonlight flew out to the side, cutting a small swath through the enemy tide.

"Nice one, Arko!" Harry commented.

"It was, indeed, nice!" Leoric agreed with a grin, glad that his words seemed to have helped.

Azeroth could always use more paladins. Whether they placed their faith in the Holy Light or Elune was irrelevant, as long as they fought against evil.

XXXXX

"Oof, what a day." Harry sighed gustily as he fell into bed.

The battle had ended quickly after the sand reaver had its tail chopped off, the qiraji no longer sending new waves of reinforcements at them. After that came the task of fortifying their newly gained territory and hauling away the giant drowned carcass that surfaced once the Swamp of Dirac ran its course.

"Mmm." Luna agreed, already half asleep. She had once again wiped herself out resurrecting as many people as possible.

"Don't you two at least want to wash up before going to sleep?" Jessir asked, a little amused.

"Mmm, bath later, nap now." Luna murmured, blindly groping around with her hand.

Unsure of what the human woman wanted, Arko grabbed on to the appendage, only to yelp in surprise as she was yanked down onto the bed.

"Luna!" The night elf protested, trying to gently extricate herself.

"Shhh." Luna hushed and shoved her breasts into Arko's face. A few seconds later, she sighed in blissful relaxation as her cuddle buddy gave in to the inevitable and started sucking on a nipple. The familiar rush of feelgood hormone soup flooded her brain at the act of breastfeeding and knocked her out as effectively as a mace to the back of the head. More, actually, considering her metal skull.

"I'm getting really curious if that feels as good as she makes it look." Jessir commented, mostly to herself.

"My offer to make you a new body…" Harry was interrupted by a massive yawn. "… is still on the table."

Jessir joined him on in the bed and settled her head down on his chest, idly playing with his chest hairs. Those were rather novel for her, as night elves generally had no body hair at all, unless they were druids and connected to a furry totem animal.

"No thanks, I'm quite happy with my current body." She declined.

Jessir might not be a druid, but she was still a night elf and that was much too far outside nature for her tastes-

"Too bad, I'd feel much better if your skeleton was indestructible." Harry sighed and drew her close.

"That's sweet of you." Jessir smiled, listening to his heartbeat. "But how about you teach me some more magic instead? Arko seems to be getting a handle on this paladin thing and I don't want to be left behind."

"Will do." He agreed. "Any requests?"

"Something to deal with groups?" She had been frustrated by her inability to deal with hordes of enemies today.

"Can do." He replied and fell asleep.

Jessir smiled again and closed her eyes, wiggling closer to his furnace-like body. While she wasn't as tired as Harry or Luna, it had still been a stressful day and some sleep was sounding very appealing.

XXXXX

"This wasn't quite what I had in mind when I asked for training." Jessir grumbled, struggling to stay focused and maintain the orb of arcane energy between her hands.

"It's important that you learn to shut out distractions while working magic, especially magic that can backfire on you." Harry replied sagely as he fondled her rear, nibbled on the point of her ear, tweaked her nipple and generally made sure to be as distracting as possible.

"I know, but… is this really the best way to go about it?" She protested weakly, the ball of unformed arcane energy losing cohesion as her attention wandered.

"The best way would naturally be to train in live combat, but that isn't really an option right now." He pressed himself closer. "Now enough talking and more focusing. You aren't at the level where you could banter while casting."

That proved to be the case as Jessir lost control only a few seconds later, helped along by a pinch to her nipple.

"I'm starting to think that you're just messing with me." She huffed, stepping away from him. "There's no way this is a real training method."

"You can ask Luna if you don't believe me." Harry offered, amused. "She'll be happy to tell you in great detail about all the things I did to her, Fleur and Dora while demanding they cast spells. You're actually pretty lucky; Azeroth is much richer in magic than Earth, so you have it only about half as hard."

Jessir faltered, seeing that he actually was serious. "Why can't I use my bow? It's not like I'm going to be casting spells like a mage."

"Because I don't want you specializing yet." He responded patiently. "Your bow is a powerful magical catalyst as well as a weapon. I have no doubt that you'd be able to quickly figure out how to replace your arrows with spells in short order. You could probably even become some kind of bow-using pseudo-paladin since Elune would be happy to lend you some of her power."

"You're a thousand years too late to stop me from specializing in archery." Jessir pointed out, crossing her arms defensively.

Harry was briefly distracted by the sight of her naked breasts being pushed up by the action. "You've never really used much magic along with it before and a person's magic has a way of 'getting used' to what they frequently use. Luna, for example, is pretty bad at offensive spells, but can do things with support magic that I would need a lot of preparation to pull off. We're already working at a disadvantage because, as you said, you're focused on archery. No need to make it any harder."

Jessir looked briefly disgruntled before smiling coyly and sashaying towards him, reaching out to curl a strand of dark hair around her finger. "Are you sure you won't let me use the bow just a little bit?"

Harry smiled, amused at the attempted seduction. Funny thing about night elves, they were so long lived and had such slow reproductive cycles that they could go weeks, months and sometimes even years without a peep from their libido, but getting them stirred up wasn't much harder than it would be with a human. They did have an extreme fondness of foreplay, though, but whether that was common to all of them or just a thing Jessir and Arko had going was as of yet unknown.

"Jessir." He murmured, leaning in. "Behave, and get back to work."

The huntress huffed and turned around. "I still don't think this is necessary. You aren't making Arko do it."

Harry grabbed her around the waist so he could murmur into her ear. "Arko has no aptitude for arcane spellcasting whatsoever, which is honestly kind of baffling given your race's sensitivity to magic. You, however, have enough to be worth teaching and teach you I shall. I want you to learn how to transcend simple physical space before we move on to more destructive applications."

He could feel her frowning as she tried to parse that and decided to translate.

"I want you to learn how to Blink. I'm sure you can at least appreciate the tactical advantage of short-range combat teleportation."

And if he got the idea from Eldar warp spiders… well, nobody needed to know about it.

"I can see how it would be useful." Jessir allowed.

"Good, now get your sexy purple cheeks back to work." He stepped back a pace and gave said cheeks a light slap of encouragement. "We don't have much longer before we have to go back out into the real world and I want to see some progress before that."

"Slavedriver." The huntress grumbled, but did as she was told.

Harry knew that it wasn't the night elf way to work at such an intense pace. As was usually the case, the best thing about their race was also the worst thing about it. Their extreme longevity meant that their perception of time was very different from a human's. Something that happened a few decades ago was still considered a recent event to a night elf.

Aside from the other benefits of longevity, this allowed them to take a much longer view of things, as well as connect events that to a human would be isolated incidents. Conversely, it also meant that unless they were in literal life-threatening danger, they wouldn't feel any kind of urgency to act. Jessir had probably expected her tutelage in magic to take upwards of a century, at least subconsciously.

Harry was only going to take a little bit of extra enjoyment out of working her into the ground.

XXXXX

"Isn't this a bit strange?" Jessir asked quietly, keeping her eyes peeled for possible ambush. "We haven't faced any organized resistance since that room with the battleguard and the sand reaver."

That was true. It had been over a week since then, a week for exploring the labyrinthine sprawl of tunnels and the opposition had been a lot more lukewarm. The enemies were more varied, with some clerics attempting to put up an organized front and squads of qiraji warriors combined with battleguard attacking them along with swarms of silithid soldier and worker drones. There had also been a giant slime that everyone figured the qiraji had been using as some kind of trash disposal unit and another supergiant wasp, along with its nest.

In short, it felt more like facing a military that had already been broken and had its head cut off than one that still had solid leadership.

Most recently, they had passed another monstrously large hall that had reminded Harry of the great hall of Moria from the Lord of the Rings, except alien and organic. The hall had many anubisath sentinels and obsidian destroyers prowling it, which would have been a huge pain to get through if not for his explosive devices.

Now they were moving back into the original ancient stoneworks that they hadn't seen since the entrance. Harry was quietly impressed by the masonry, as it still looked almost pristine despite the sense of age coming from it, to say nothing of the fact that it was built miles down into the earth.

"Not if you take arrogance into account." He replied to Jessir. "The Twin Emperors must have run out of generals. Taking command themselves and taking every opportunity to kill us would be the sensible thing to do, but it would also be admitting that we are a threat to them."

"That sounds… stupid." Arko commented.

"It most certainly is, but it's what usually happens when some humorless cunt goes too long without having their pride challenged." Harry shrugged.

"Do you think they'll be waiting for us in some dramatic setting and start talking down to us condescendingly as soon as we arrive?" Luna asked.

"Skeram did it, so I'd say it's pretty much guaranteed."

The wide stone corridor continued for a while longer before opening up to a vast, wide open chamber. In the very center of this chamber floated a gigantic ghostly eye, staring at the two figures kneeling before it on the other end. As soon as the vanguard of the Might of Kalimdor entered, the eye spun around to stare at them instead, the humongous slit pupil pulsating slightly.

They all froze under its regard, feeling a heavy presence bearing down on them, but at this point the only ones left were hardened veterans. Harry had noted that C'thun's insidious whispers got stronger the further they delved and it eventually became too much for most of the army to bear, so now their numbers were reduced to less than a hundred.

Jessir and Arko honestly weren't sure if they deserved to be counted among that number, but they knew that if they bowed out now, they would keep doing it every time things got hard in the future as well.

C'thun's projected eye disappeared after a few seconds, leaving the group alone with the Twin Emperors.

Said qiraji were very unusual among their kind, looking much more humanoid. They were even wearing actual armor instead of their natural chitin and using weapons. The one to the left used a staff and the one to the right a clearly magical sword, obviously being a wizard and warrior, respectively.

"You have trespassed far, mortals." The staff-user said.

"Your souls will be brought before the master." The swordsman added, rising to his full height of approximately twelve feet. "Come, brother, there is blood to be shed!"

"None will escape!" The staff-user agreed and the both charged forward.

Harry's brows furrowed in confusion. Why was the obvious wizard of the duo charging right at them? It made no sense, which meant that there was probably a trick of some kind to it. Even the most arrogant of wizards understood that distance was their ally. Harry himself only willingly closed into melee when he knew with absolute certainty that he would have the advantage.

One of the last remaining riflemen dwarves didn't much care to unravel the riddle, all he cared about was the huge humanoid bug bearing down at them with sword held high. He aimed the muzzle of the flamethrower and let loose with a stream of golden flame.

Bafflingly, the warrior Emperor didn't even try to dodge, despite being plenty fast enough, and instead attempted to just run through the consecrated napalm.

The other brother screeched in shocked pain, his skin sizzling and charring for no apparent reason. "Brother?!"

The shock in his exclamation told Harry a great deal. They had not expected the flame to hurt him. Some kind of immunity? Was that why they were obviously linked to each other so tightly as to suffer the same injuries? In exchange for selective invulnerability?

Whatever the case, both brothers flailed around in the manner of everyone burning alive, eventually falling to the ground, dead at the exact same time with the exact same injuries.

There was a solid minute of confused silence at this turn of events. People shifted around awkwardly, still high on wasted adrenaline.

"Well, that was…" Von Zeldig eventually tried to say, searching for the right words.

"Anti-climactic?" Harry offered. He, too, had expected an epic battle.

"Aye, this won't be a tale to share with the lads over a pint." Foehammer said in disappointment.

Yes, 'they died like bitches before the fight even started' wouldn't make much of a story.

"Let's just… move on." Saurfang turned around and marched towards the passageway forward, clearly intending to forget about this farce of a fight.

XXXXX

To much frustration, it turned out that they weren't quite at their destination yet. The stonework once more gave way to a sprawl of bug tunnels. And they didn't even have the luxury of establishing a forward base this time. C'thun's presence was too strong this deep underground, so they had to repeat the miles-long trek from further up over and over as they explored.

This slowed things down tremendously, seeing as more qiraji and silithid kept crawling out of the woodwork to obstruct them no matter how thorough they were in the extermination.

It took another week before they finally found what they were almost certain was the way to C'thun.

"This is a trap." Harry concluded looking at the gigantic open chamber that was full of nothing but deep sand. "In fact, this might be the most obvious trap I've ever seen in my life. They couldn't have made it more obvious if they posted a sign."

"The only way forward is on the other side, so it hardly matters how obvious it is." Saurfang grunted, no happier about the situation than the wizard.

"Have we any clues as to what foe awaits us?" Von Zeldig questioned.

"The chamber is vast." Malagav commented, staring about the cavernous space. "It follows reason that whatever uses it is also vast."

"It's too quiet." Windstryke added. "The whole time that we've been down here, there was always some kind of background chittering. Here, it's as quiet as a tomb."

"Always a good sign." Harry grumbled sarcastically. The ominous air of the chamber hadn't escaped him.

"Whatever it is, fighting it on the sand is going to be dangerous even if the shamans harden it." Foehammer said. "Maybe we could lure it back to better footing?"

"Worth a try." Saurfang nodded and stared at Harry expectantly.

"Ooh, I wanna do it!" Luna butted in excitedly.

"By all means." Harry stepped aside with an amused smile.

Luna held out her hand and the sand began to coalesce into a big lump before fusing together into a single object. Then it began to flow into a new shape, eventually forming into a monochrome yellow dog.

"Fetch, boy!" Luna tossed a ball that was suddenly in her hand and the dog took off, barking excitedly.

"That wasn't an earth elemental…?" One of the other mages commented to himself in confusion.

Harry smirked, knowing that Azeroth's mages had never really dabbled much in transfiguration of that type.

The fake dog reached the ball and… nothing happened. It trotted back, looking tremendously pleased with itself and still nothing happened.

"Could it be that we are simply being paranoid?" Von Zeldig asked dubiously, clearly not believing it himself.

"No, something is definitely paying attention to us." Harry replied, staring at the sand. "I can feel it, and it whatever it is, it hates us."

"Mhm, I feel it, too." Luna nodded.

"The earth also whispers a warning of great danger." A shaman concurred

It wasn't just C'thun's ever-more overbearing presence either. There was definitely something else here, something more bestial.

"Aye, but how do we lure it out of hiding?" Foehammer pondered.

"I could find a few bandits or cultists or other shit-stirrers." Harry suggested, already considering the best location to find them. Azeroth was bound to have plenty. "Maybe our friend over there will be more inclined to show himself with more realistic bait. It probably wouldn't take me more than a day or two to get them."

"That would be dishonorable in the extreme." Von Zeldig cut in with a protest.

"Don't be such a paladin, Leoric." The wizard rolled his eyes in exasperation. "You'd kill the people I'm talking about yourself if you met them, but using them as bait is too much for you?"

"I'm none too comfortable with the idea myself, laddie." Foehammer admitted. "Killing in battle is one thing, but what yer proposin'…"

"What I'm proposing is practical." Harry insisted. "Bandits prey on non-combatants and disrupt the local economy. Cultists might be up to all sorts of nasty shit. We'd just be forcing them to do something heroic with their lives instead of causing trouble if you think about it, and we'd be removing problems elsewhere while we're at it. It's like winning twice."

"You are… not wrong." Von Zeldig sounded as if the admission pained him. "But still, I cannot condone such barbarism. We should achieve our aims without sullying our souls with dark deeds."

"That's a cute sentiment, now if you could please return to the real world, it would be much appreciated."

Standing off to the side, Commander Lynore Windstryke approached the rest of Harry's party.

"Are you not going to weigh in on the argument?" She asked the three women.

"No." They chorused, shaking their heads.

Lynore blinked at the almost creepily unified response. "Why not?"

"Because we don't like Harry's plan either." Arko admitted. "But…"

"We're probably going to regret not going with it." Jessir finished for her, nodding. "And he's going to be unbearable about it afterwards, so it's for the best if we just keep our opinions to ourselves."

First impressions aside, Harry was definitely not a hero in the conventional sense. Too ruthless by far and willing make use of extremely questionable means whenever it was convenient, but that just made him all the more effective. He also liked to stare judgmentally at people that ignored his particular brand of wisdom and paid for it, radiating a smug aura of 'I told you so'.

"I like your tattoos." Luna changed the subject completely. It wasn't the first time that someone asked for her opinion on the way Harry did things, but she trusted her husband. There was no need to talk about that.

"Thank you?" Lynore said/asked in bewilderment at the non-sequitur.

"Enough!" Saurfang finally spoke, having been silent as Harry, Foehammer and von Zeldig argued. "I will not have an army under my command conduct itself in a dishonorable fashion. That means no sending captives out as bait."

Harry threw his hands up in the air in frustration. Why was it that 'honorable' people always had to do everything the hard way?

"Fine, how about a cow, then?"

XXXXX

The cow did not work any better than the fake dog, leaving them with no way to properly scout out the enemy.

Harry could have tried flying over, but like hell was he risking that against an unknown, especially when his perfectly reasonable suggestion got shot down.

The shamans had still performed a short ritual to commune with the earth spirits and harden the sand so that it would be less of an impediment. They had less influence over sand than on proper earth, but it was still better than trying to transfigure that much surface area into something more solid.

Frankly, Harry would have preferred to take his time and suck out the sand with some kind of wind tunnel, then dealing with whatever was hiding under it, but that would have taken quite a while and he understood why Saurfang didn't want to wait that long. C'thun was near, they could all feel it.

They entered the chamber cautiously in a wide formation to minimize casualties when the trap was inevitably sprung. It happened when they were pretty much exactly halfway through.

"It comes there!" A shaman shouted in warning, pointing at a spot almost directly in the middle of their formation. "Scatter!"

Everyone obeyed quickly, but it still wasn't fast enough. A massive form erupted from the ground, sending hardened sand and people flying.

It was a titanic beast, a giant, armor-plated worm. At least a hundred meters of it was sticking out of the ground and there was no telling how much more of its body was still buried beneath the sand.

What is it with this Dune rip off?! Harry thought incredulously. Sure, it didn't look like a Dune sand worm, but a sand worm was a sand worm.

"Triangle formation!" Saurfang was bellowing, trying to impose order on the fight. "Surround it!"

Von Zeldig called a hammer of Holy Light down on it, more to get its attention than to hurt it.

Seeing what he was doing, Harry, Luna and most of the other spellcasters switched their focus from catching the people that had been launched into the air by the sand worm's appearance and started casting blessings and protective enchantments on the paladin. Blessings to fortify his body, grant him additional strength. Enchantments to absorb kinetic energy and keep his feet on the ground.

Leoric grunted when the worm used its own body as a weapon to swing at him, striking him with the all the force of its massive weight. The blessings on him made him as sturdy as a castle wall, but he still felt his bones rattle.

But he had achieved his goal. The distraction was long enough for the others to get into position and start attacking its undefended sides. Most of the weapons barely made a scratch on its incredibly thick hide, but the more powerfully magical weapons did cause some damage.

The sand worm roared in pain and twisted around to face the one that had hurt it the most, Arko and her Holy Moonlight Greatsword.

The night elf froze for a second at being the target of such a beast, not knowing what to do. Despite its massive size the worm was deceptively quick and there was nowhere to escape. All she could do was instinctively place the weapon in front of her as a warding gesture and reach for the divine power that she had been haltingly learning to use over the course of this campaign.

Luckily it did the trick and a brief shimmer of moonlight blocked the wide sweep of the sand worm's body, even the massive force behind its several hundred ton body insufficient to overcome Elune's protection.

The failed attack disoriented the worm long enough for her to scramble out of the way and let a more experienced paladin take over protection duty.

The sole remaining flamethrower dwarf also took the opportunity to spray holy napalm over the sand worm's back. The sticky stuff clung to its scales and continued burning, but didn't actually seem to be doing much damage. It did, however, serve to infuriate the beast.

It twisted around again and took a deep breath, blasting out torrent of sandy wind at speeds to put a hurricane to shame.

It had aimed perfectly and caught a good chunk of the ranged attackers. They were mostly mages, archers and the like and not wearing particularly heavy armor. There was much screaming as the spray of sand flayed open any exposed skin.

Jessir had been one of those caught in the breath attack, but her fully enclosed suit of armor and helmet left her unscathed.

The sand worm was still on fire from the napalm while this happened and apparently did not like it, for it burrowed back under the sand with an angry screech.

"Harry, my arrows aren't doing anything!" She used the reprieve to call out at her wizard lover. The sand worm had no visible eyes and its 'face' was basically just a thick plate of chitinous armor with no discernable weaknesses. The adamantine arrowheads sank in just fine, but lacked the penetrating power to actually hurt it, even if she enchanted them with whatever magic she knew.

Likewise, the mages and shamans had not had much luck with their spells either.

"Use this!" He called back, tossing her a vial of Silver Fire. "Shoot it in the mouth!"

Jessir caught the vial and briefly wanted to demand how she was supposed to do that, before recalling the Sticking Charm that he had taught her a few days ago. It had not been the destructive area of effect spell she had been hoping for, so she had learned the seemingly combat-useless spell only grudgingly.

This at least explained why he had been so adamant that it was a crucial spell for her to learn. It was a compromise.

"Over there! It will surface there!" A shaman roared, pointing right at the cluster of people that had earlier been caught in the breath attack. Luna had been busy healing them, but some had had their eyes ruined and had not been able to scatter the way the rest of the group had.

Both Harry and Luna were quick to heed the warning and magically yank as many people as they could out of the way, but they didn't get everyone. A good half dozen were still sent flying.

The sand worm itself did not look much worse for the wear. There were a few bleeding gashes along its lower body and a large patch of scales on its back was visibly singed, but it was obviously far from seriously hurt.

"Surround it again!" Saurfang bellowed urgently. "Get in close!"

The old orc had realized that allowing it a chance to use its sand breath again would severely cripple their fighting capacity even if it didn't kill anyone.

Harry knew it, too, so he decided to get its attention. Bringing his hands together as if gathering something, a ball of bright blue flame coalesced between his hands. A second later a beam of condensed fire shot out from it and hit the sand worm just under its 'face'.

Luna had been busy catching people with Slowfall spells and had her back turned to the danger, but it was hardly the first time that she had needed to trust her husband with her life, so she continued to focus on her task.

As Harry had hoped, the continuous attack infuriated the creature even if it only seemed to be doing relatively superficial damage. Those armor plates had to be ludicrously thick.

Even as it turned towards him, he kept up the attack, aiming at the mouth. This either made it reluctant to use its sand breath attack or so infuriated it that it wanted to deal with him up close. In any case it started moving towards him with speed, ripping up the ground as it went.

Harry let go of his spell with a huff of relief. While not as demanding as some other things in his repertoire, spells that required continuous channeling were still pretty taxing on the mind. In the next instant he turned tail and ran, right towards Jessir.

"Jessir, get ready to shoot it!" He yelled, sprinting for all he was worth. The fucking sand worm was fast!

The huntress readied her modified arrow and tried to ignore the fact that several hundred tons of bloodthirsty monster was barreling right towards her.

Fortunately, Saurfang's orders were still in effect and anyone not being healed was moving to once again surround their enemy.

"Hold, beast!" Von Zeldig declared dramatically, planting himself directly in its path. "You go no further!"

Harry ran right past him then turned around and started casting every bit of protective magic he could manage to make sure that the paladin wouldn't be sent flying just by the sheer mass differencial. He was still blazing with Holy Light and Luna's blessings, as well as the enchantments Harry had put on him earlier, but you could never be too sure.

The furious sand worm didn't appreciate being denied its quarry and slammed into the shield with all the force it could muster. It was enough to push von Zeldig back several feet, but he endured, much to its fury.

The massive creature reared back and roared in frustration, which was exactly the opening Jessir had been waiting for. Usually, its mouth was turned down and covered by an armor plate, but not the angle was perfect. She let fly with the modified arrow and, while it went slightly off target, the razortooh-lined maw was more than big enough for that to not matter.

The vial of Silver Fire broke against one of the sword-like teeth and ignited almost instantly. Bright silver flames licked at the roof of its mouth, melting the flesh like it was wax.

The sand worm twisted and roared in pain, before once more taking refuge underground.

There was a moment of tense silence, before someone nervously spoke up.

"Did we get it?"

"No, the earth spirits say it is still moving beneath us." A shaman reported. "But it burrows deeper instead of resurfacing."

"Spread out!" Saurfang barked. "Thirty feet of distance at all times. I do not want it capable of catching more than one person when it surfaces again!"

Harry would have liked to protest that it wasn't going to surface again. Silver Fire was an incredibly destructive substance and didn't go out easily. Unfortunately, it was also entirely magical, so he actually couldn't be sure whether a beast like that would be able to snuff it out or not.

Sure enough it was less than a minute later when a shaman once again called out a warning that it was coming back up. Somewhat predictably, the unfortunate soul being targeted was Jessir, but Harry was able to yank her out of the way before she was sent flying.

The sand worm… looked pretty horrible. Melted, charred flesh drooled out of its mouth in a river of melted fat mixed with sand. Its jaw hung open, the muscles used for controlling it obviously destroyed beyond use. Its teeth were blackened by the superhot flames and boned was clearly visible on the roof of its mouth. That it was even still alive with injuries like that beggared belief.

It also looked very, very pissed off. The very air in the chamber felt heavy with rage.

Harry was both impressed that it could survive such extensive injuries and professionally offended that it had somehow managed to smother his Silver Fire, which was intended to burn for six hours.

The tableau lasted only for a moment before the sand worm gave a gurgling, pained roar and started lashing out at whoever was closest. No longer did it target whoever it perceived as the greatest threat, but simply tried to kill anyone it could reach. It knew that death was near and was determined to take as many people with it as it could.

Several people got sent flying with broken bones despite Luna's protective blessings before the more defensively oriented paladins could get into position. Even then it was difficult to contain the rampaging beast as its movements made it less predictable and more than one fighter was badly injured or even killed by its thrashing.

But the wounds started adding up. Arko, Saurfang and a Kro'kron orc that Harry had lent his draconic poleaxe to were doing the most damage. Especially Arko, as the other two weapons couldn't pierce quite as deep as the greatsword.

Plus, Arko had, over the days spent fighting their way through the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, learned an ability that Harry was stubbornly calling Draw Upon Holy Might, which from discussions with von Zeldig didn't really have a name and was considered a fairly basic paladin ability to augment their bodies.

Harry himself, along with the remaining mages and archers, were mostly targeting its open maw, further adding to the damage.

Despite all that, it still took a good ten minutes of continually hacking at the sand worm before the ancient monstrosity fell.

When it did they all remained cautious and ready to spring back into action, but the oppressive air quickly cleared from the chamber. Only then did they allow themselves to relax and the first cheers rang out.

Harry, though, was less sanguine. He turned to Saurfang and von Zeldig with a sardonic expression. "Still think it was worth worrying about a few bandits?" To emphasize his point, he gestured over to where Luna and the other healers were taking care of the wounded.

"We managed." The old orc grunted, obviously not willing to concede on the matter.

XXXXX

"Well, this is it. Only an Old God left to fight." Jessir said nervously, trying to hide her apprehension. "I never imagined I would be fighting something like that."

The four of them were still at the tower, having made a short stop before the moonwell in search of comfort and guidance from Elune. Although they didn't know for sure that only C'thun remained, they could feel it.

"You aren't alone." Luna reassured her, a muted 'clang' of metal on metal accompanying the obligatory hug. "Just do your thing and trust everyone else to do theirs and it'll be fine."

"But what if C'thun gets in my head again?" Arko fretted. "It happened with Skeram and it's bound to be a lot worse if the Old God itself tries it."

It was a concern that Jessir had as well. She knew that the only reason she hadn't fallen under the same influence was because she hadn't been targeted.

Harry came up between the two night elves and pulled them close by their waists.

"Let me tell you two something." He began sagely. "When I was a young man, newly involved with three women who would later become my wives, I thought it was only fair that they be allowed the freedom to sleep with other men as I slept with other women. However,… I was lying to myself."

"Lying to yourself?" Arko questioned in confusion, both at the story and what it had to do with the current situation.

"Yes, lying to myself, because I didn't want to admit to my hypocrisy. See, I absolutely would not have tolerated that, because I hate sharing. But now I am an old man and can own my hypocrisy proudly. You aren't allowed to get subverted by C'thun, because you belong to me."

Both Arko and Jessir snorted out laughs, strangely reassured by the statement that they might have taken offense to in a different situation. Nothing quite like the threat of being brainwashed by an eldritch abomination to put things into perspective.

"That's fine, as long as you belong to me, too." Arko retorted, glaring at him fiercely.

"Big words, but can you back them up?" Harry teased. He and Luna had been subtly working to encourage the sexually dominant streak they'd spotted in Arko and it was good to see that it was helping her confidence.

The neophyte paladin glared for a moment longer before pulling him in for an aggressive kiss. Harry suppressed the urge to take control, not wanting to discourage her.

Once she was satisfied, she broke the kiss and immediately lunged for Luna and then for Jessir.

"Let's go!" Arko declared, jamming her helmet on to hide the blush on her cheeks. Embarrassed though she was, she was also rather pleased with herself.

"Wha…?" A confused Jessir blinked, not quite sure what had gotten into her friend.

Harry interrupted her with another kiss. "Just roll with it."

"My turn!" Luna chimed in and gave the huntress another smooch before she could get a word out. Then she gave one to Harry just to complete the set. "To the portal!"

"You two are up to something." Jessir said suspiciously, shaking off her surprise at the series of ambush kisses.

Luna giggled and Harry smirked deviously, doing nothing to dispel her suspicions.

XXXXX

The bug tunnels had given way to ancient stonework once more. All of them could feel that they were approaching a great darkness and their numbers had dwindled further as people lost the will to keep going before the battle even began. C'thun's presence weighed heavy on the hearts and minds of all.

"You will doubt yourself." Harry was lecturing as they slowly and cautiously advanced deeper into the temple. "You will doubt your allies, you will doubt your courage, you will doubt your strength. Every drop of hope will be swallowed by despair. Old fears and regrets will weight you down like anchors around your heart. Victory will seem impossible and even lifelong friends will seem like traitors. It is imperative that you ignore these feelings. C'thun is a creature of the Void, and as such pulls on the darkest and heaviest emotions. You lack the experience to recognize it as an outside influence, but you can push through in spite of it."

"You speak as if you do have experience in such things." Saurfang commented, gripping his axe tightly even though they had not encountered a single enemy since passing through the lair of the now slain sand worm.

"I began dabbling with the Void when I was still a child." Harry admitted easily. "I didn't really know what I was getting into, but I was lucky. My world had no creatures living in the Void, so its influence was passive. C'thun presses down on us with malice aforethought."

"Your world allows apprentices – as I presume you were – to dabble with such dangerous forces?" Von Zeldig asked in shock.

"No, but I was a contrary little brat. I wouldn't believe fire was hot unless I burned myself first."

"Was?" Luna asked, tilting her head sideways.

"Well, I'm not a little brat anymore."

That got a few chuckles, the mood lightening ever so slightly. It didn't last long as the tension once more got to people, but Luna made it her personal mission to keep people's spirits up. She flitted from person to person, asking questions and generally being herself. It helped to break up the heavy air, but even with the blessings that she and the handful of other priests, priestesses and paladins cast to protect everyone's mind from C'thun's influence, everyone could still feel the oppressive presence all around them.

They expected to come upon C'thun's chamber any moment now, but they received a surprise before that.

In a small side chamber that was completely bare of furniture, they came upon three people. A male black-haired gnome with a truly impressive mustache dressed in blue tunic and britches with a brown vest over it, a silver-haired night elf male in a red robe with intricate silver decorations and a horned, green-haired night elf female in a brown and green skirt and midriff-baring top.

All three looked ragged and not just in the state of their clothing, but also by the tension and strain on their faces, looking as if they couldn't believe that anyone had made it to them. Despite that, they stood with a stiff defiance.

Harry knew immediately that they weren't what they seemed. They had a similar draconic presence to Chromie, but with a different flavor. The gnome was connected to the planet's magic on a much deeper level than anyone he'd ever seen, the night elf male exuded a sense of life and the night elf female had a dream-like quality to her.

"Arygos the Blue, Caelestrasz the Red and Merithra of the Dream." He said, remembering these three from the Tyrande's information packet. At the very end of the first War of Shifting Sands, these three had committed to a suicide charge into Ahn'Qiraj, pushing the qiraji forces back enough for the Scarab Wall that had kept the qiraji contained for the past millennium to be erected behind them. "We weren't expecting to find you down here."

"And we did not expect to be found, much less by mortals." Arygos replied.

"We could scarce believe it when we felt our stolen essence return and knew that Moam must have been slain." Caelestrasz added.

Ah, so that was why the samples he had taken from Moam had registered as being nothing special. C'thun had somehow bound the power of these three captive dragons to the obsidian destroyer and that power had returned to where it belonged upon its destruction.

On a different note, he was very impressed that they managed to retain their sanity after a thousand years of being kept in such close proximity to C'thun. Their draconic nature likely gave them an edge, but it was still impressive.

"You may yet succeed where we failed long ago." Merithra spoke up. "C'thun lurks just ahead, the avatar it had crafted already holds the whole of its will, but as of yet only a small fraction of its power. Slay it and it will be forced into dormancy. Fail, and it will quickly recoup the losses you have inflicted on it and renew its attempts to swallow Azeroth in darkness."

No pressure, huh? Harry was amused. He had already suspected that it didn't matter how many bugs they killed if they couldn't get the big boss at the end, so this news didn't faze him. The tidbit about C'thun only exerting a small fraction of its power and already able to do so much, though… that was somewhat worrisome.

It made him feel underpowered.

"Will you aid us in this?" Saurfang asked.

"We would if we could." Arygos growled in visible frustration.

"C'thun's power keeps us shackled here. We will not be free unless you defeat it." Merithra added stoically, though a hint of longing sadness shone through.

"We'll see about that." Harry muttered and stepped forward. He took off his helmet and placed a gauntleted thumb on Merithra's forehead, while his other fingers rested lightly on her jawline.

"What are you doing?" She asked in confusion, but sensing no threat did not try to stop him.

"I may not be a god anymore, but it is still mine to undo the bonds of those held against their will." Harry replied, finding the twisted spellcraft that bound the shapeshifted green dragon and recognizing it as anathema to his own being. In this, the power difference between him and C'thun did not matter, his divine portfolio, even if it no longer extended beyond his own soul, had greater authority. "Walk free again."

Merithra blinked in shock and brought up her hands, experimentally clenching them into fists. She had felt the human mage reach out to her with his soul, felt the divine spark within and then the dark power holding her in bondage unraveled as if it was nothing. "I am… free?"

"Of the power that held you here? Yes. But are you free for dinner after we win this?" Harry grinned at her.

"Harry, this is not the time." Jessir moaned in embarrassment. Bad enough that he was flirting with a dragon, but he was doing it just before they were about to fight an Old God.

"Jessir is right." Luna nodded firmly. "Free the other two, then we kick C'thun's butt, then we'll have plenty of time to flirt with the pretty dragon lady. I like your horns, by the way. Would you let me polish them?"

"Ummm…." Merithra was incredibly nonplussed by this level of boldness from mortals. It may have been a thousand years since she had seen any, but she distinctly recalled there being more distant awe and respect aimed at her, rather than… this.

"How did you do that?!" The green dragon was spared from having to give a proper answer by the outburst from one of the Kirin Tor mages that was still with them. "Unraveling a thousand-year-old spell cast by a being as powerful as C'thun... it shouldn't be possible!"

That was true. Spells tended to gain power as they aged. Any conventional means of undoing it short of killing the caster would have been ineffective. That being said, Harry had already given out all the necessary information for people to figure it out. If they didn't want to believe then that was their problem.

"So, how about that dinner?" He continued addressing Merithra.

"I suppose…" She consented awkwardly, not able to really refuse without seeming ungrateful.

"Yay!" Luna cheered and looked like she was holding back the urge to hug the shapeshifted dragon.

"Do you two even realize that you're talking to one of the daughters of Ysera, the Green Dragon Aspect?" Arko demanded very calmly.

"Yes." Luna nodded.

"What's your point?" Harry raised an eyebrow.

It wasn't that he had high hopes of actually snagging a female dragon – the species difference would mean wildly divergent standards of what was sexually attractive, leaving only the mental component as an attack vector – but some things a man just had to try. Who knows, maybe their shapeshift went extra deep?

Arygos and Caelestrasz, although impatient to be freed as well, were having entirely too much fun seeing their friend getting flustered by a couple of overly forward mortals to say anything.

"Enough!" Saurfang did not possess the same sense of humor, however. "Free the others and then we battle C'thun."

"Your fangs are still way too sour." Harry complained, but complied with the order.

Saurfang ignored him and addressed the three dragons. "Will you aid us, or would you prefer to get out of here?"

He would not begrudge them if they decided to flee, but having three dragons on their side would certainly be useful.

Merithra shook off her bewilderment and firmed her expression. "I will stand with you. C'thun must fall if Azeroth is to be kept safe, no matter the cost."

"Our long captivity has left us weakened, but we have strength enough to show that abomination why it is unwise to cross a dragon." Arygos added. His pride would not let him turn away while mortals fought.

Caelestrasz nodded as well. "We will finish what was started so long ago, in Alexstrasza's name."

XXXXX

"This is the entrance to C'thun's chamber." Merithra said quietly. They all knew that there was no point in keeping their voices down, that the Old God already knew they were there, but the instinct was hard to shake.

Said entrance was pretty innocuous non-descript, just a square passage in curving stone corridor, but the presence emanating from it was unmistakable.

"Alright, give me just a second." Harry said, stepping forward and pressing himself against the wall just before the turn.

Saurfang had been about to ask questions regarding the Old God's powers and what they might face, but now he was curiously watching to see what the wizard would do, along with everyone else. They all expected him to pull out some clever contraption.

What they got was… "Is that a mirror on a stick?"

"Yes." Harry nodded, maneuvering his peek-a-boo device so that he could spy around the corner. "Sometimes the simple solutions are the best.

"And what are you seeing?" Saurfang asked, no quite able to keep the deadpan out of his tone.

"A giant eyeball staring right in this direction." Harry sighed. "It's going to blast us with eye-beams as soon as we turn the corner."

"How do you know it has eye-beams?" Arygos asked, confused. "Even we have little idea as to C'thun's powers in combat."

"It's a giant eyeball, it definitely has eye-beams."

"What else is in that chamber?" Saurfang pushed on, not wanting to admit that the simplistic logic made sense to him.

"Nothing whatsoever. It's just a big open space." Harry reported with a frown. "That's both good and bad, I suppose. Plenty of room for us to maneuver, but nowhere to hide."

"Is there enough room for us to transform?" Caelestrasz asked.

"Should be, but I'm not sure if transforming is a good idea." He answered, frowning thoughtfully. "It would make you bigger targets."

"Caelestrasz and I will be of little use against that abomination if we do not." Merithra admitted. "The powers granted to us by our flights are ill-suited for battle."

"You can join me in the support squad!" Luna suggested eagerly. "We could use another healer and you can never have too many layers of protection against mental attack."

The two shapeshifted dragons looked at each other, before giving a slow nod.

"It sits ill with me to let mortals battle this foe while I act in support, but you have made it this far." Caelestrasz voiced their misgivings, somehow managing to sound begrudging while also conceding gracefully. "I am no priest, but as the son of the Lifebinder, I do have some power. You will have Alexstrasza's blessing during the battle."

"And while I cannot shield your minds directly, Ysera's blessing will muddle C'thun's attempts to reach them." Merithra added.

"Are we truly going to let mortals tell us how to fight?" Arygos asked in distaste.

"They have done more than we managed a thousand years ago." Merithra gently rebuked him. "We will keep our true forms as a last resort."

"That is decided, then." Saurfang nodded, secretly glad that he would not have to deal with three full-sized dragons on the battlefield. Powerful as they no doubt would be, they would also be in the way. "You said earlier that you had little idea about C'thun's powers. Anything would help."

"It can spawn tentacles, seemingly unconnected to its main body." Arygos answered grumpily. "These are minor avatars, containing the smallest splinter of its power, but still not to be underestimated. The eyestalk ones are especially dangerous, as they will attack your minds."

Harry assumed they knew this from experience, but didn't ask. "Good to know. Also, do not, under any circumstance, look at the main eye directly. Direct eye contact makes it easier for a practitioner of the Mind Arts to invade your mind and I'm going to assume the same applies to C'thun. In fact, avoid looking at anything even vaguely eye-like."

"That seems cowardly." One of the Kor'kron grumbled, getting more grumbles of agreement. "Why should we fear to look our enemy in the eye?"

Harry fixed him with a deadpan stare. "The Void returns even the boldest gaze. Don't be stupid about this."

"We shall cut them the extra eyes before they can strike!" Von Zeldig declared dramatically, derailing any confrontation. "That being said, we need to find a way into the chamber first. If your supposition is correct, then it would be unwise for all of us to expose ourselves to its eye-beams, so I will volunteer to go first."

"You are our strongest paladin, we cannot risk losing you." Saurfang argued.

"It is because I am the strongest that I must go first." The paladin countered. "If I fall, then you know to send no one after me and instead seek an alternative method of attack. if I survive, I may be able to take the beast's attention away from the entrance and allow the less sturdy among us to enter the chamber."

For all that it sometimes seemed like von Zeldig had a death wish almost as bad as Saurfang (only in his case it was out of sheer drama), the man did have a keen mind for tactics. It was true that if they couldn't breach the entrance then the entire venture was pointless. Some risks had to be taken.

"The reckless bravery of mortals." Caelestrasz smiled, somewhere between bemused and impressed. "I see now how you have managed to come this far."

It took a while to get everyone ready. Blessings and enchantments were layered on thickly and potions were passed around to fortify them further. Once there was nothing else to do, von Zeldig huffed out a breath to psych himself up, raised his shield and took a deep breath.

"For Azeroth! HAAAAAH!" He shouted and took the corner at a run.

As Harry had predicted, C'thun immediately blasted the man with an eye-beam. Von Zeldig grunted and stumbled a little, but his own great constitution paired with the multitude of other protections allowed him to hold firm.

Harry had been peeking around the corner with his mirror on a stick the whole time and soon spotted the moment he was waiting for. C'thun took its giant eyeball away from the entrance to glare at the lone paladin now curving around into the chamber.

"Go!" He snapped, slapping the next guy in line on the back.

The man bolted forward and C'thun's attention instantly came back to the entrance, blasting out another eye-beam. It failed to kill this one as well.

The pattern repeated itself a couple of times, then the paladins and warriors that had made it into the chamber started attacking the Old God, taking enough of its attention that it no longer looked back to the entrance when new people entered its chamber.

"Everyone go!" Harry called and the antsy group immediately thundered inside. The waiting had been getting to them.

Harry and his group stuck together this time. There were no battle lines to hold and they felt more comfortable working together than being split apart.

There was also the fear that he and Luna would be less able to weather any attacks by C'thun due to their non-native origins. A physical attack they could endure, but a mystical one would be problematic. For that reason, Luna was maintaining a permanent shield of moonlight around them to defend against any such attacks.

But overall the fight was going… surprisingly smoothly. C'thun frequently blasted people with more eye-beams, but the healers and Caelestrasz were able to fix up any damage that got through their defensive measures. Tentacles kept spawning, both regular grabby ones and the eyestalks that Arygos had warned about, but they were being swiftly chopped down or sniped.

In their case, Arko was focusing on the grabby ones while Jessir took out the eyestalks with arrows. Harry had his poleaxe in hand just in case, but rarely needed to use it and was able to focus on lobbing spells at the giant central eyeball. They were only doing a fraction of the damage that he thought they should, as even something as theoretically frail as an eye was apparently stupidly resilient when you were an eldritch abomination. It was worse because none of the melee fighters dared step on the pool of shadow from which the organic, spiky platform that held the eye grew.

It made things seem hopeless, but he knew that feeling to be false. C'thun was trying to erode their hope and make them give up.

And speaking of doubt… Harry also kept a wary eye on his allies. If someone cracked under the mental pressure C'thun was exerting, he wanted to be ready to act. Even with the bonds of battle created by fighting together this far, there was still plenty of unresolved grudges between certain groups, particularly the humans, orcs and night elves.

He was well aware that C'thun was preying on his lack of faith in people and trying to twist it into a certainty of betrayal, which was why he set a firm limit for himself. No matter how convinced he became that someone was going to turn, he would not act first.

The relatively smooth sailing came to an end when C'thun's eye turned towards them. All four immediately fixed their gazes downwards, while Harry and Luna worked together to put up the strongest barrier they could manage, a mixture of Elune's divine protection and sublime spellcraft. Neither was eager to discover what their lacking magic resistance would make of an eye-beam.

The beam crackled across the shield of solid moonlight, failing to penetrate.

"Are you alright?" Jessir asked, not stopping her sniping of the continually regrowing eyestalks.

"I'm okay." Luna replied, taking a deep breath. "That was pretty strong, though!"

"Well get ready for another one, because C'thun seems to have taken that personally." Harry warned, feeling another build-up of power.

"Oh dear." Luna responded plainly and called upon more power for another shield, Harry quickly adding his own contribution.

The second beam also failed to penetrate, unlike before it didn't let up. Shadowy tendrils of Void stuff crawled over the moonlight barrier as C'thun kept up the assault, seeking to overwhelm it via brute force.

Harry didn't know if it the spells he had lobbed into the giant eyeball earlier had marked him as a serious enough threat to merit this kind of focus, if it could see that he and Luna were more vulnerable than any of the others or if it just really hated being completely stymied in its attack. Whatever the case, it was clear that the Old God was determined to get to them.

On the one hand, this was good because it gave everyone else a much more free reign to attack it. On the other… They were in serious danger of dying.

The rest of the Might of Kalimdor had caught on to the situation and the vigor of their attacks increased. Melee fighters went after the tentacles, while mages and ranged weapons targeted the main eye. Arygos in particular was doing a great deal of damage with his magic.

Jessir was feeling particularly frustrated by the situation. Arko was being kept busy cutting down any tentacles that tried to grab at either Harry or Luna, leaving her as the only one that could actually attack C'thun directly, but her arrows just weren't strong enough.

Gripping her bow tightly and drawing back the string without an arrow, she focused on her rudimentary understanding of magic to create one. The Holy Moonlight Greatbow glowed and silvery light collected in her hand.

Before she could begin doubting herself, Jessir loosed the 'arrow' and a lance of solid light shot out, hitting the Old God right in the middle of his eye slit from where the beam attack was coming. To her own surprise, it flinched and the continuous beam broke off.

"You've been practicing with your bow despite me telling you not to." Harry accused, more impressed than annoyed. After all, he would have done the same thing in her shoes.

"Scold me later." Jessir deflected and went back to sniping the eyestalks.

C'thun appeared disoriented for a few seconds before fixating on another target, but it was clearly losing ground. A few more heavy spells and a plethora of projectiles struck it and then it just sort of… deflated.

Cheers rang out at the apparent victory, but Harry knew better. The sense of danger was only growing.

"It's not over!" He yelled out with magic enhancement to make sure everyone heard. "Stay focused!"

The ground rumbled and the pool of shadow bubbled as the spikes of C'thun's 'eye socket' grew longer, snapping closed like some kind of demented bear trap. It heaved itself out, a multi-eyed, multi-mouthed abomination with a vague resemblance to a crustacean. It stood on thick, tentacled legs, the ends of which burst forth from the ground and began attacking everyone at once.

One of the tentacles emerged practically on top of the four of them. They threw themselves aside to avoid it, but it was quicker than it looked. Their armor prevented any serious injury, but they were still sent skidding across the ground.

Judging by the screams from all around them, that was not an experience unique to them and most of the others didn't have the armor to come out of it unscathed.

There was no need to give out any orders, all of them quite accustomed to their roles already. Luna threw healing spells and protections to everyone in her sight. Arko went to chop down the giant tentacle alongside Harry and Jessir started drawing on C'thun's main body.

Harry knew that his poleaxe didn't have enough surface area to really cause any significant damage, so he weaved an enchantment about it that increased it.

Whatever bile an Old God used as a blood analogue sprayed from the limb as the two weapons struck it, but it was still lashing around and smacked them away.

"Again!" Harry shouted, wrapping a flaming whip infused with Light around the tentacle and using it to pull himself forward. The whip was hot enough to melt through a human body in seconds and sizzled against the Void-spawned flesh, but burned through only painfully slowly. "Don't let up!"

"I've taken out all the eyes on this side, I'm moving around!" Jessir reported. She was honestly unsure if destroying those eyes had done any actual damage to C'thun, or impaired its ability to see in any way, but it was better than doing nothing.

Harry wrenched his poleaxe out of the tentacle, dodged another swipe and swung at it again, hacking at it like a lumberjack. Arko arrived a few seconds after him and, being largely ignored by the eldritch limb, managed to sink her greatsword deep.

The tentacle thrashed wildly, possibly in pain if it was capable of feeling such a thing, but with the wounds it was sporting its range of motion was limited. It could not really defend itself as the two of them hacked the rest of the way through.

A roar rang out from the other side of the chamber and there was suddenly a red dragon there with them. Judging by the tentacle trying to wind itself around him, Caelestrasz must have transformed to avoind being crushed.

Now in his true form, the red dragon tore his way out of the constricting hold and stomped on the tentacle, before proceeding to breathe a sustained cone of fire on C'thun's main body.

When it was over… C'thun looked barely even singed, his carapace apparently resilient beyond reason.

"Next tentacle!" Harry ordered, bumping Arko's shoulder to get her attention. This was no time to be gawking at the giant lizard or thinking about how invulnerable C'thun seemed.

As they ran, Harry pulled another vial of Silver Fire from his hammerspace and chucked it at one of the many mouth's ringing the Old God's body. If the carapace was too tough, then the insides had to be softer, right?

The familiar silver flame burst out of the mouth and there was a distinct screech of pain that made everyone cringe from its sheer wrongness. Unfortunately, C'thun then just snapped that mouth shut and the Silver Fire was snuffed out.

"Son of a bitch." Harry groused, annoyed at yet another enemy failing to die to one of his most powerful creations.

"It hurt it!" Jessir said optimistically. He and Arko had caught up to her because she needed to stop every so often to shoot out C'thun's eyes.

"But it didn't DIE!" Harry responded, shouting the last word as he swung his poleaxe at another tentacle with all his might.

He and Arko were more familiar with the way those things moved now and had less trouble staying in melee range.

"Then we'll cut it to pieces from the outside in!" Arko roared back in response, her sword glowing with holy power as she swung it, carving a deep gasp into the eldritch limb. Her nervousness about facing the Old God had since been overtaken by a fury not entirely her own as she learned to channel Elune's wrath.

That was much more up her alley than the gentler sides of the Moon Goddess.

C'thun, however, apparently had enough of them hurting it and opened one of its mouths. A powerful suction pulled them close and all of Harry's attempts to resist with spells failed, there being more than mere wing drawing them in.

As soon as they touched the pool of darkness that surrounded C'thun's body, they sank in and were gone.

XXXXX

Luna did not like being angry. When bad stuff happened, she preferred to weather it by staying close to the people she loved. And if a situation called for anger, Harry could always be relied upon to be angry enough for both of them. Her own anger was shown by how much – or how little – she protested to his usually vicious retribution.

But this time she was alone. Her husband and the two new sister-wives that she hoped would endure the passing years better than the ones who came before them were taken from her. There was no one to cuddle with and no one to get angry on her behalf.

"Give them back." Luna said softly, tightening her grip on her Holy Moonlight Greatstaff.

She had been just a bit behind them, staying out of the way of the actual fighting and providing support the way she was comfortable with. She had seen them get pulled towards C'thun and instinctively reached out with her magic to pull them back, to no avail.

Another tentacle sprouted from the ground near her with clear intent of attack. She heard Saurfang shouting orders and the two orc bodyguards she had been assigned for most of the campaign thundering in her direction, but they would be too late.

Luna called on Elune's power and gave it shape. A beam of radiant moonlight shot out from the headpiece of her staff, longer even than the blade of Arko's greatsword.

She swung her staff and what was effectively a lightsaber of divine power cleaved through the tentacle with ease. Where Harry's Light-infused sorcery was resisted, Elune's purer power could not be. C'thun did not belong in the material world and the Moon Goddess rejected him utterly.

"Give them back." Luna's face drew itself into an uncharacteristic glare and she drew upon Elune again to smite the Void-spawned abomination. It's nearly impervious carapace was useless against a power attacked its very nature.

The communication enchantment couldn't reach Harry, Luna or Arko, but she knew they were still alive. The blood bound bracelets on her left forearm still pulsed strongly. That meant that they weren't entirely in the material plane anymore.

Luna was oblivious to the looks of shock and awe everyone was giving her as she did more damage to the Old God than all of them combined had managed. The only thing that mattered was getting her family back.

Any tentacle that spawned near her was swiftly bisected and the assault of divine power continued. C'thun's carapace cracked where bolts of starlight and moonlight struck it. Any exposed fleshy bits burned as the Void-stuff that comprised it was rejected.

Inspired, the paladins under von Zeldig drew deep on their own power and threw everything they had at the Old God. Their efforts were vastly less effective, but they were not ineffective. Mages and warriors and archers also smelled blood in the water and went for anything that looked even vaguely like a good target.

The three dragons, sensing weakness like the predators they were, launched their own attack. Caelestrasz was already transformed and began breathing fire on the Old God again, this time joined by the other two, bathing the Old God in a multi-colored mass of flame.

Its otherwordly vocalizations of pain made something in their souls cringe away, but they pressed on with grim determination.

But that barely registered to Luna. She knew that most everyone would have burned themselves out already doing this and she did feel the strain of channeling so much of Elune's essence, but she didn't stop. The power was almost identical to what had once been hers and that familiarity made it easy to wield. Besides, if she couldn't get them back then survival was not a concern.

Elune understood and agreed. Two of her children – and Harry – were in danger and she offered power freely and unstintingly if it would save them. For all that she often disapproved of his methods, the wizard was undeniably working towards goals that she whole-heartedly did approve of.

Perhaps C'thun understood the concept of cause and effect, because three armored forms came flying out of the mouth that was pointed at Luna and skidded across the floor with an ear-splitting screech of metal on stone, coming to a halt directly at her feet.

Moments later, a massive pillar of golden light exploded out of the Old God, sending chunks flying everywhere and knocking everyone save the three dragons off their feet. The noises it was making in its death throes made everyone cringe.

Everyone except Luna. She was too relieved to have her family back. Sure, their armor looked a bit corroded and their cloaks were little more than threadbare rags and they moved like they were in pain, but they were back with her!

"Hi, honey." Harry greeted tiredly.

"Are you okay?" She asked, already casting healing spells before they could reply.

"Just fine." He replied, sighing in obvious relief as the healing spells washed over him. "I even got a souvenir."

Luna gave the thing in his palm a cursory glance. It was just a small iron tube, perhaps a little over a foot long. It felt old and magically powerful, but she didn't understand why Harry seemed so pleased with it.

Eh, whatever. She had her family back, so everything else was irrelevant.

XXXXX

Earlier

Being forcibly transported was always a disorienting experience, but Harry had to admit that being pulled into a pool of shadow and then falling into a lake of acid in pitch darkness was a whole new level.

He quickly to put away his poleaxe and grabbed on to the two night elves, casting a spell to make them extremely buoyant so that they floated to the surface. Once that happened and he had a good idea which way was up, he took flight out of the liquid with his two burdens in tow. While doing this, he noticed that his magic felt ever so slightly off. He could still cast spells, but it no longer felt like they were quite on Azeroth. Not good, but a problem for later. A quick cast of Magelight revealed them to be inside a fleshy cavern, which meant that the acid lake was probably whatever passed for digestive fluids inside an Old God.

Harry made for a small fleshy island and deposited the night elves on their feet, already looking for an exit.

"Where are we?" Jessir asked fearfully, trying to shake off the acid.

Harry could relate. He could feel and hear the stuff sizzling against the metal and eating away at the cloth beneath. Their cloaks were definitely going to need replacement despite the enchantments on them. There was already an uncomfortable feeling around his neck area that promised to become a burning sensation shortly.

Damn it, he had made the armor in such a way that it could handle toxic environments. Spores, poison gases and even the venomous atmosphere of a feminist rally wouldn't have been a problem. What he had not expected was to have to deal with was an actual corrosive environment. Seriously, who takes a dunk in a lake of acid?

They did, apparently. Now he was going to need to figure out how to make fully insulated suits of armor just in case it happened again. Sure, there were spells that could do that, but they would be too easily undone if they weren't tied to physical objects. It would be… challenging.

"I think we're inside C'thun's stomach." Arko answered her friend, gripping her sword tightly and sounding rather pale.

"We had a name for this kind of sexual fetish back home." Harry quipped.

"This is not the time to be sharing your homeworld's perversions, Harry!" Jessir's voice was more than a bit shrill and she was obviously terrified.

Frankly, he was pretty scared himself, but he was abusing the hell out of his Occlumency to suppress the emotion. He needed his mind sharp.

"Relax." He replied with unnatural calm. "We're getting out of here."

"How?" Arko asked, warily eyeballing the tentacles that were now sprouting from the stomach acid.

"That looks like the esophagus." He said, pointing at a hole in the 'ceiling'. "We just have to fly up."

Harry had no idea if that was true, especially given their mode of arrival, but it was worth a try.

"Alright, let's go then." Jessir suggested.

"Not yet." Harry denied, bringing out a certain object from his hammerspace. "Watch those tentacles if they decide to get aggressive."

"What are…?" Arko cut herself off upon spotting what he was doing. "Harry, why are you activating the Light Bomb?"

"C'thun was kind enough to bring us inside its defenses. It would be a shame to waste the opportunity."

Originally, the Light Bomb was meant to be a clean up item, something to destroy the Old God's body and make it harder for any Twilight's Hammer cultists – the mortal servants of the Old Gods – from using it to cause further trouble.

Being able to use it as a weapon was unexpected, and there existed a good chance that they wouldn't be able to escape the blast radius. But then, there existed a good chance that there was no way out of C'thun's gullet and that they were already as good as dead.

"Alright, but hurry up!" The neophyte paladin snapped, widening her stance.

"So bossy." Harry murmured, bringing a container filled with liquid Light from one of the thankfully still functional expanded pockets in his cloak. Bad idea to keep that kind of stuff inside your soul.

His helmet hid a grimace as the stomach acid finished burning its way through the mooncloth gambeson and reached the skin beneath. It was mostly happening around his shoulders and feet, small trickles of corrosive liquid sizzling over the skin until it reached the muscle below. Fortunately it didn't look like it would get to anything vital, but damn did it sting.

He quickly inserted the container into his cute little doomsday device and twisted the top, so that it would start filling up. Inside of a minute, the recursive runic array would reach critical mass and return the stabilized liquid form of Light into energy. It was the same kind of device he had used to try and obliterate the Shadow Lands, but the power was much more easily available here on Azeroth.

To the surprise of nobody in particular, the tentacles were not content to stay away for very long and began trying to knock them back into C'thun's stomach acid.

Arko, in just as much pain from the acid as Harry, managed to draw on Elune to protect herself, but had absolutely no idea how to share that boon. This made her feel more than a little angry and frustrated, which she decided to take out on the tentacles.

Jessir had some trouble aiming her bow because of the acid steadily wrecking the muscles on her arms, but she managed to at least fire off a few Moonlight Arrows to blow holes into the tentacles. The effort was exhausting, both physically and mentally, but she was in that peculiar grimly focused headspace that many warriors entered when death could come at any moment. She wasn't an idiot and knew that Harry was probably acting more confident about their escape than he felt.

Harry was almost done setting up the bomb when something swam into his peripheral vision.

It was an innocuous iron tube, completely unremarkable and something that you wouldn't look twice at in most situations.

However, this wasn't most situations. For one, it was swimming on top of C'thun's stomach acid, not sinking as iron should and apparently impervious to its corrosive effects. For another, Harry felt an immediate kinship with it.

He knew that it hadn't ended up within arm's reach of him by accident. It had been drawn to him just as he was drawn to it.

Knowing that this was no time to be distracted by the shiny, he quickly scooped it up and finished setting up the Light Bomb.

"Alright, girls, I'm done here." He said, standing up. "Come and give me a hug."

The two night elves didn't protest the phrasing, simply putting away their weapons and holding tightly to his sides.

Harry immediately took off, evading a swipe from the tentacle and shooting into the hole that he really hoped was the esophagus. Another Magelight was conjured to light the way and they flew through the fleshy tunnel as fast as they dared. Fortunately it was quite roomy and straightforward, so the chance of crashing was minimal.

"Can you hear that?" Jessir asked, audibly perking up.

"Combat!" Arko matched her enthusiasm. "We're getting close!"

Harry, meanwhile felt them passing back into Azeroth proper and was relieved. That relief lasted for approximately two seconds before he felt the Light Bomb going off behind them. The mystical explosion lacked the blast wave of a more ordinary one, but it was more than made up for by the desire to not get caught in it, so Harry went for max speed. A fortuitous decision, as the raw blast of Light screwed up his flight spell just moments before they made it out of C'thun's fanged mouth and sent them hurtling ass over teakettle across the floor.

He could hear Arko and Jessir groaning softly in pain and figured that their non-metal skeletons had probably appreciated that even less than he did.

But at least they'd ended up in the right place.

"Hi, honey." Harry said tiredly to his wife, able to feel the happiness, relief and worry radiating from her at their return.

XXXXX

OMAKE – Training Aid

"I thought you said we were going to be training?" Jessit asked, confused.

"We are." Harry nodded.

"Then why aren't we going outside or to the training room?" Arko pointed out the discrepancy.

"He must have meant the sexy kind of training." Luna chirped. "The only thing in this direction is the sex dungeon."

The two night elves froze in place and stared at him, clearly hoping he would deny Luna's words.

"That's right." He confirmed instead. "I even did a short dimension hop to find you someone to practice on."

"You can't just kidnap someone from another dimension!" Arko shouted in outrage, leaving aside the definitely-not-agreed-upon 'sexy training' in favor of the bigger issue.

"This is definitely crossing a line, Harry." Jessir frowned deeply. "Using magic that most people would consider evil to do good things or keeping demons prisoner to experiment on is one thing, but taking random people and imprisoning them in your… sex dungeon is quite another."

"Oh, there was nothing random about my choice." Harry chuckled. "You'll understand once you meet her."

Although still deeply skeptical, they decided to hold any further objections until they arrived. Worst comes to worst, they could set her free with profuse apologies and a promise that it would never happen again.

"So you've returned, wizard." The impressively well-proportioned blonde panted, squirming in place and looking like she was attempting to glare. "And you brought dark elves, no doubt to torture and violate me in unimaginable ways. What a beast, to take pleasure at the sight of a noble crusader of Eris being humiliated. Hnngh!"

"Is she… aroused?" Jessir questioned, blinking at the downright pitiful attempt of the bound woman to sound outraged. In fact, it sounded like she was giving them suggestions. In comparison, being called dark elves barely registered.

"Oh yeah." Harry nodded. "She goes by the name of Darkness because her given name embarrasses her. She is her world's equivalent of a paladin and also a hardcore pervert of the highest order."

"Even if you reveal my shameful secret to everyone, I will not give in!" Darkness moaned. "No matter what you do to me, what tortures and depravities you subject me to, I will endure them all!"

"What secret?" Harry rolled his eyes and gestured to her groin. "We can all see what a thirsty whore you are."

Darkness threw her head back and shuddered at the insult, hips bucking wildly.

"I think she just had an orgasm." Luna observed in wonder.

"Yeah, she was born into high nobility so everyone always treated her deferentially." Harry explained. "Given how many screws she has loose, that means that she's essentially been blue-balled her whole life. The smallest things will set her off."

"To talk about me like I am not even here…" Darkness panted, clearly getting turned on again. "… Like I am merely some toy for you to play with…"

They all waited for her to finish, but it appeared that the 'noble' crusader had drifted off into a lewd daydream.

"So…" Harry turned to Arko with a raised eyebrow. "You've been quiet this whole time. What do you think?"

Arko jumped slightly, her cheeks darker than normal. "I suppose she clearly doesn't mind being here…"

"You will not break me! Even if you take that whip over there and beat me with it for hours, even if you violate me unceasingly until you get bored and then put me in a stockade for use by your minions, I WILL TAKE IT ALL!" Darkness ranted, breathing raggedly with obvious lust.

"Ehehe, that's a bit… much." Jessir chuckled weakly.

"When I said she was a hardcore pervert of the highest order, I really meant highest order."

"She might be too much of a pervert, though." Luna pursed her lips. "I don't think even you have it in you to be as harsh as she wants, much less a newbie like Arko."

"Hey!" Arko protested, although she wasn't quite sure what exactly she was protesting.

"It doesn't really matter what Darkness wants." Harry declared, ignoring the moan his casual disregard for her feelings brought out of the blonde pervert. "I brought her here because she doesn't really have any limits, so she makes a perfect target for a budding dominatrix to test out what she's comfortable with."

"But I don't want to test out my limits!" Arko protested again. "I'm not a pervert!"

"Yes you are." Harry assured her. "And this is an important step in your combat training as well. You'll never reach your full power if you don't understand yourself, which includes your kinks. Also, I'm not putting her back where I got her from until I'm satisfied with your progress. She was part of a group that was on a quest to kill a demon king or something, so she might be important to the continued survival of her homeworld."

"You're blackmailing me into this?!" Arko spluttered in shock.

"I prefer to think of it as providing incentive."

"Don't pretend that you aren't at least a little interested." Jessir teased. "Even I'm a bit curious."

"Good, because you're doing it, too."

"What?!" Now it was Jessir's turn to make a shocked exclamation.

"You might be more vanilla than Arko, but that doesn't mean you get to skip this."

"To be used as a training aid for the perversions of others, how shameful." Darkness moaned and drooled. "If the only way to return to my comrades is to submit to your whims, then I have no choice. Come and do your worst."