Under the Moons of Stranglethorn - ch.18

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“Auntie Nyx!” the half-goblin squealed as she stormed into Nymphixia’s room at the inn, a look of malicious delight on her impish features as she shut the door behind her. “You’ll never guess what I just saw~!”

The warlock blinked her misty, faded green eyes a few times before turning to regard the small frame of Lina, the youngest sister of Mione and Nariana’s bizarre little brood. “I suppose I likely never will, little one,” Nymphixia said calmly, exhaling as she snapped shut the sizeable leather-bound book that was sitting in her lap. “Would you care to tell me?”

“Syllawin! And Sorrowyn! They’re doing it!” the look of delight on Lina’s face was a bit unusual, or at the very least, unexpected. The younger sister hadn’t had much time with her older siblings, despite having already lain with them both, but nor had it taken her particularly long to see the way they looked at each other -- the way they craved one another even when they’d been with her. Seeing them finally overcome what they’d struggled against for so long was strangely thrilling.

One preposterously long golden brow arched as Nyx regarded the smaller girl, silent for a moment before finally inquiring further. “Doing what?” she said flatly.

Lina let out a frustrated sigh through her nose, glancing back through the door she’d come through before turning back to Nyx, hushing her voice to a whisper. “Fucking!”

“Ah. I can’t say that’s particularly surprising to me. Pardon me for being a bit slow to come around.” The blood elf let out a little sigh of her own, though a more melancholic one, setting her book on the bed beside her. “I’m getting a bit too old to keep up, I feel.”

The young half-breed looked more confused now, cocking her head to the side as she made her way over to the bed, hopping up onto it and sitting down next to Nymphixia. “Old? You look just as young as Syl and Sora to me.”

“Mm. Yes. I suppose you would think that.” Nyx smiled softly, ruffling the goblin girl’s hair before affectionately stroking one of her deep burgundy braids. “Sometimes age doesn’t manifest in the body as it does in the soul. I’ve been alive for a very long time, little one. With that elven blood of yours, you’ll likely live for quite some time as well.”

Lina nodded slightly, tapping her lower lip in thought. “Alright, I’ll bite -- how old are you, then? Old as mom?”

“That depends on which mother you’re referring to. I haven’t had enough interaction with your... draenic, mother, to know much of her past.”

“Alright; Nariana, then.”

“Ah, yes, Nariana. I met Nariana back when she was quite a young woman, actually. We fought in the first war against Arthas together...” Nyx’s voice trailed off briefly, following her eyes which stared out into space for a long moment, finally snapping back to reality after Lina gently poked her shoulder. “Not together, obviously. She was Alliance, I was Horde. Lieutenant-Commander, as you heard earlier tonight.”

“Wait... don’t you mean you fought against her? Mom was a death knight, right? I know that much.”

An uncomfortable pause was followed by a brief, mirthless chuckle. “You’re right, of course, Lina. It seems I may have given away a bit too much.” Smoothing her robes across her legs, the warlock turned to more fully face Lina, searching the young girl’s face for a moment before finally speaking. “I suppose there’s something I should tell you. Something I’ve never told anyone. The stories Nariana told you weren’t... entirely accurate. Not lies, of course. She believes them to be true just as much as you do.”

A expression that seamlessly blended suspicion and curiosity danced across Lina’s youthful, pale green features. “What are you talking about? What happened?”

Scooting to the nightstand on the other side of the bed, Nyx poured a thin green liquid into a tiny glass sitting beside it -- closer to a pill cup or shot glass than an actual receptacle for any meaningful amount of liquid. Taking the tiniest sip of it, the warlock’s eyes became distant once more -- though this time they weren’t escaping, but searching, delving back into the past, moving decade upon decade back through time. “Well, as I said, your mother and I fought against Arthas together. She was Alliance, I was Horde....”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

“Hold the line!” bellowed the marshal, a curvaceous, dark-skinned orc that Nyx had only seen a few times before being placed under her command. “They’ll do their best to overwhelm you. They’ll use their numbers,” she continued, before her voice lowered to a deep growl, somehow retaining its impressive volume. “...Don’t let them.”

The blood elf inhaled deeply, closing her eyes for a moment, feeling the tension in the other soldiers around her. They were quite a motley lot -- many of the standard-issue orcish grunts had fallen in the first wave of the Scourge’s brutal onslaught. An array of troll headhunters, some freshly-converted Forsaken, and some more advanced orcish shock troops made up the majority of Nymphixia’s platoon, of which Nyx was the only elf, a freshly-promoted warlock of in no way inconsiderable power.

She could hear the Alliance soldiers marching from the other side, kaldorei ballistas leading the assault ahead of a tightly-formed legion of human soldiers. This was their best shot. The Scourge had taken so much from them, but the time had finally come for the free peoples to make their counter-strike. Each hodge-podged group of combatants began to move forward as their respective commanders urged them, briefly pausing to reform their positions before moving forward once more. The undead were coming, Nyx could hear them -- almost smell them now. It wouldn’t be long.

Platoon upon platoon locked together, each led from the front by their respective commander -- racial and cultural tensions were set aside as the living (and even some of the enslaved dead) united against their common foe. Nymphixia clutched her staff tightly, the smooth, lean metal rod comfortable in her slim hands, her eyes burning with an all-consuming fel rage that she couldn’t wait to extinguish in the faces of a ravenous onslaught of corpses.

That was until she looked to her side, catching a brief glimpse of the commander of the Alliance legion that had now entwined with hers, humans locking shields with orcs without a second glance or third thought. She was a woman, night elf, tall, impressively built -- just enough muscle to accentuate her womanliness and a massive blade strapped across her leanly-arched back. A two-handed sword, unusual for a traditional kaldorei sentinel. There was something unusual about this one, and Nyx tried to convince herself that it was more than only the blue-haired commander’s exquisite beauty. Hardened yet vibrant, a true and clear warrior.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

“By the Sunwell, she was beautiful,” Nyx sighed softly as she recounted the tale of her “meeting” with Lina’s mother, eyes lost in thought for another moment before focusing on her old friend’s half-bred daughter. “That Alliance commander was your mother -- a warrior even in life. I never did end up learning what her rank was, though I assumed it was something similar to my own. Just high enough to command her own squadron, with so many superior officers dead in the fight with the Scourge. She was an impressive one, though....”

“Mmmhm, I can tell, Auntie Nyx,” Lina said teasingly, a small smirk crossing her features -- a curious, if pleasant, blend of elvish delicacy and goblin mischievousness. At the slightly confused look she got in response, Lina nodded downwards, directing her gaze and Nyx’s to the obvious tent in the blood elf’s robes.

Nymphixia blanched, recoiling awkwardly and pressing her thighs together, completely failing to in any way conceal what had “come up” during her recollections. “I, um... ignore that. There are a lot of feelings I have for your mother that never entirely got resolved. Remembering her -- and the way she was then -- it... I apologize.”

“Don’t apologize,” Lina purred, licking her lips and scooting forward on all fours, trying to lift the hem of Nyx’s robes as the blood elf attempted to scurry backwards.

“Wh-what are you doing...?”

“I wanna see it!” Lina said cheerfully, her small frame bowling the frail warlock over as she continued to pull Nyx’s robe up, finally revealing a pair of white, stuffed panties and pulling them down playfully, gasping at the sight of the slim girlcock that sprang up. Biting her lip, the younger girl added “...and maybe play with it...” as she lightly wrapped one hand around it, giving Nyx’s cock a few slow, easy strokes to test the elf’s reactions.

Cringing with pleasure, Nyx bit her lip and scooted back a little more, seemingly accepting the fact that she couldn’t escape Lina’s curiosity and quickly finding that she didn’t much want to. “Nnngh... Lina... you shouldn’t....”

“Nah? I think I should,” Lina purred with a defiant giggle, continuing to softly stroke and tease. “Don’t stop telling your story though, I wanna hear it.”

Coughing awkwardly and propping herself at the head of the bed, Nyx licked her lips and tried to continue, panting softly as the teen tyke satisfied her curiosity. “U-um... where was I... right. The Scourge was nearly upon us....”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The undead ranks slammed into them like a mighty tidal wave of bones and steel and frozen blood, chewing and hacking and stabbing, attacking as a single unit with no mind besides that of their ultimate commander, the Lich King that drove them forward. The front ranks of swords and spears and axes were broken through almost immediately, orcs and humans and elves alike falling on the icy battlefield of Northrend only to be pinned and devoured. Technically, they did their part, thinning the horde of the undead if only because they stopped to tear apart the newly fallen bodies.

Headhunters and sentinels immediately fell back while more elite knights and grunts rushed forward, shields in front, blades lashing forward to bring down the less focused of the massive gang. Spears and throwing axes from the troll backup brought down the undead left and right, as did arrowshots and magical blasts from the Alliance side, but it seemed like their ranks were inexhaustible. The more died, the more seemed to storm forward, and the more living soldiers fell in combat, the more seemed to rise back up to join the ranks of the Scourge. It seemed like there could be no end to their hunger and their hatred and their frightening speed.

Nymphixia herself immediately fell back, black robes and wrappings billowing in the icy breeze as she held her staff tight. The mighty, jagged goliath that was the figure of the tormented infernal she’d bound to her service beat its way through the undead, though tiny animated corpses clung to it, scratching and bashing and gnawing at its rocky, radioactive “flesh.” Even with its size and capacity for destructive output it was having difficulty putting a genuine dent in the ranks of the Scourge.

Despite the great and horrific powers loosely bound to her disposal, the slim warlock held back,using spells that would only strike a single target or small cluster. With the soldiers in front she had to stay responsible -- after all, they were the ones giving their lives to prevent the wave of undead bodies from reaching the casters and commanders at the back ranks, a denomination to which Nymphixia humbly belonged. She continued to backpedal across the field of war, stumbling over the bodies of those sacrificed as she continued to send hazy, screaming bolts of fel flame into the Scourge, setting them ablaze and scattering, still not doing enough to turn the tide of battle.

The reality of the situation was becoming increasingly clear: even with the Alliance at their side, without backup or a serious change, they would lose this battle to the Scourge. Yet more commanders, warriors, and mages that would be overtaken by the undead. More resources.

When you looked at it as a matter of numbers, a matter of a greater good in the face of an ultimate destructive force, what Nymphixia did next seemed less reprehensible, less unnecessary. Less evil.

Drawing in a deep breath, Nyx’s eyes blazed with a fiery green light, her slim body shuddering and shaking as massive amounts of power surged through her, her blood the very conduits to the many dark pacts she had written and sealed to gain the abilities she had. She called upon that dark sorcery, the might of the Legion to collapse what the Legion itself had foisted upon Azeroth.

Soldiers and captains alike looked up to the sky as it screamed down from the heavens, their savior and possibly their destruction. Sweat-stained from the effort, Nymphixia brought her staff crashing down into the ground, using every ounce of her power and her focus to bring the cracked, green-oozing fel asteroid as close as she could to where she wanted it to land. She succeeded, for the most part....

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

“This story’s getting kinda long, Auntie Nyx,” Lina said disapprovingly, now laying on her stomach in front of the warlock to better examine the slim, smooth, steel-hard girlcock she was playing with. Rubbing it between her fingers, she took a delicate lick at the end of it, bringing a soft moan from the blood elf.

“Well... you’re rather distracting me, little one...” Nyx murmured, biting her lip and scooting her robes up a little more, protesting what Lina was doing and yet much too far to want her to stop now. “I’m afraid I got a bit sidetracked with the details of the battle, and... what I did. I guess it is necessary knowledge for you to understand what happens next.”

“Alright, I’m still listening,” the smaller girl murmured, licking again along the length of Nyx’s shaft while the middle finger of her other hand poked and prodded playfully at the snug, pale hole resting underneath Nymphixia’s small, tightened sack. When the elf winced and squirmed in protest, Lina naturally accepted it as a sign of encouragement and slowly forced the digit inside, pumping it in smoothly while she licked and stroked, her big, innocent eyes looking up at the warlock with a naughty smile. “What happened next?”

“W-well... nngh... the demonic rock crashed into the ranks of the Scourge, decimating their numbers,” Nyx’s storytelling was punctuated with a soft moan, growing more urgent now that Lina had added an experimental finger to her anus and started using her tongue. “I did my best to make sure that none of the living were hit. I failed.”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The battlefield became a different scene after that. Smoldering bone, armor, and flesh was now far more a dominant sight than the hungry dead, and the forces of the living -- which had been considerably pressed against the ropes until now -- began to hack through the scattered remnants of undead who were still able to battle. Their forces had been taken down a great deal, with perhaps 40% of the number of living soldiers they’d begun with. Still, within a number of minutes, the remaining undead were brought down to the frozen ground beneath them, where they’d stir no longer.

“Who did that?”

“How did we live?”

“It came from the sky... who had that kind of power...?”

“It was her! The warlock!”

“The elf!”

“Nymphixia!”

“She saved us!”

Cries and cheers from all around her fell on deaf ears as the elf girl stumbled forward, crawling over the bodies of the fallen, of Alliance, Horde, and Scourge alike. She’d done her best to direct the blast into the undead, she’d tried so hard. But the last thing she’d seen before it hit was a flash of blue hair and the glint of a massive blade. She’d tried, but she hadn’t succeeded.

“Is she okay?” the dark-clad sorceress whispered, stumbling and almost falling, making her way to the smashed and scorched corpse of the pigtailed night elf commander she’d seen earlier, what seemed like hours before now. She hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt. Hadn’t wanted this. Her words seemed to go as unheard to those around her as their praise had to her, neither orc nor elf nor human answering her or seeming to even acknowledge the body of their commander. Just one more casualty, a body among many. A corpse that was only important to Nymphixia.

“She’s... she’s dead, I hit her... can someone... can anyone...” the elf turned to look around her, but saw that the moment of applause had changed to one of celebration, those few survivors cheering and congratulating each other, relishing their new leases on lives that had thought certainly lost. No more heed was paid to Nymphixia. Less to the body of the night elf.

I can make you better, the warlock thought to herself, her eyes burning with that fel intensity once more, her hands shaking as she struggled to lift the armored body of the kaldorei warrior. I can make you... I can fix you. I can undo what I did.

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

Lina paused, looking up from her play to more closely pay attention to Nyx. The warlock was squirming, struggling to balance the intense pleasure and pending release she was experiencing with the melancholy of that which she was recollecting.

“Auntie Nyx... what...” Lina paused her active stroking, though left her finger buried in the sin’dorei’s rear entrance, making her keep squirming. But the more serious note to the story had somewhat stolen her attention. “What did you do?”

“I-I... I...” Nyx bit her lower lip, squirming and forcing herself to finally confess her dark secret, the one she’d kept from even Nariana for all this time. “I rose her.”

“...I thought she was a Death Knight? Risen by Arthas? You were the one who gave mom her mind back, her will?”

“No. I’m the one who gave your mother her life back.”

“But...” Lina blinked, stopping her stroking completely now and merely squeezing her small hand around the hilt of Nyx’s shaft. “She always said she was risen by Arthas, and....”

“...And couldn’t remember anything of her old life. She knows what I told her to be true. What I told her was a lie.” Nyx sighed quietly, shuffling back a little and looking uncomfortably at the other side of the room, like something there would rescue her from what she was going through now. “I killed her, I brought her back. I took her life, and gave her her new one.”

Lina chewed on the new information for a long moment before focusing downwards once more, eliciting a sharp groan of pleasure as she began to pump her fist up and down more rapidly across Nymphixia’s cock, stuffing her finger deeper into the blood elf’s anus before gradually forcing another inside. “Alright,” she growled quietly as she picked up her pace to an unmanageable level, her forearm already starting to burn from the effort. “Explain yourself. How. Why. What happened. Oh, and Auntie Nyx...” she tacked on, almost as an afterthought. “If you cum before you finish the story, I’m telling mom about this talk we had.”

The warlock swallowed hard, making fists in the sheets as she tried to hold back, her girlcock already rock hard and throbbing from all the teasing -- now, Lina’s piston-like grip was making focusing on anything excessively challenging. She let out a slow, deep breath, punctuated by a squeal as the second finger worked its way into her asshole, both of them arching upwards to grind against the button of pleasure inside of her. “I... um... it was... a few days... b-before she woke up....”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

The harsh winds of Northrend whipped and pulled at Nymphixia’s robes as she struggled to pull the kaldorei corpse to a place of shelter, the armor and heavy weapon making things more difficult than necessary. If she was going to set things right, she’d need to do so in a place where nobody could see what she was doing. Judge her for what she was doing.

A place where nobody could attempt to prevent her from breaking the laws of nature.

It was some time of struggling and searching before the warlock finally managed to settle down in an icy cave, the bear residing inside easily destroyed by a few quickly-cast curses. As its body withered to nothingness in the back of the cave, Nyx began to slowly strip the night elf of her armor, baring her athletic yet curvaceous figure. Much would need to be done. Magic of the kind she’d never even attempted before.

Summoning lower members of the Burning Legion was simple enough. Calling forth curses, blasts of dark energy, even storing the soul in a crystal; all completely doable. But with the soul having already left the body and the corpse itself growing colder by the second, Nyx was faced with the fact that the body of this night elf would never be the way it had been. It would need assistance -- part of a soul to call the rest forth. Even still, it would be impossible to make her the way she was.

Nymphixia gritted her teeth as she summoned forth a fraction of her own soul -- drawing it forth in thin, breath-like whispers of energy, an incomplete version of what would be necessary to store her essence in a soul stone. Instead of investing the wisp of life energy into a talisman, however, Nyx pushed it forth, permanently separating it from her body as she used the night elf’s body as a receptacle for it. She’d never be the same after this -- Nyx wouldn’t -- and she knew that. It was worth it. She’d done her duty for the Horde and for Azeroth. Now it was time to atone for what she’d done in the service of that duty.

Softly glowing, pulsing runes and shimmers of dark energy created a circle around the warrior’s naked, inert form as Nymphixia continued the ritual, chanting in long-forgotten tongues that weren’t meant to be heard by mortal ears. Already she was weakened by what she’d done, leaning on her staff as she attempted to complete what she’d started. With the wisp of a soul anchoring the night elf’s body to the realm of the living, she summoned forth that which had already been torn from it -- the night elf’s own consciousness, her spirit. More dark energy and blood magic infused that perfect body, flooding it, providing the fuel for the engine -- an engine that could only be restarted when the spark that was life itself was finally restored to it.

Panting as she finished the incantation, Nyx called forth the soul of the departed elf, and saw it rush into the body it had only left some short time ago....

...And the kaldorei woman inhaled the first sharp, cold breath of her new life as something that was not quite living. Not mortal, not entirely death knight, though not entirely unlike either. Something else. Something made of blood and magic, jumpstarted by a shard of a second soul.

“Wh-where... where am I... what’s... wh-why do I... hurt...?” The warrior gasped out, her eyes widening, their soft white glow replaced by a colder, harsher one, the faint blue of a highborne... or one who had been raised by Arthas.

It was the closest thing Nyx could reach for. She needed a reason to give, and there was no way she could admit to what she’d done. “You were... are... you’re a death knight.”

“A... death knight...? I can’t remember anything...” her face looked horrified, her body twisting slightly in the discomfort that was plaguing her, her body rejecting its newfound life and having difficulty adjusting. “Can’t... even remember my name....”

“I...” Nyx paused, licking her lips and leaning back against her staff, catching her breath again, visibly paler than she’d been when she’d stepped out onto the battlefield as a Horde commander. “I freed you from the chains Arthas used to bind you. You’re free now, no longer bound. You can be whoever you want.”

The elf blinked, confusion and anguish clear on her face as her wiped mind struggled to catch up with the rush of new thoughts and information, none of it the information she wanted. Memories of friends and family were gone, memories of how she’d grown up or how she’d lived her life. Her own name. “But... who... wh-who even am I...?”

Nymphixia inhaled deeply, glancing back to the exit of the cave before looking to the night elf again, her own eyes misting with the guilt of what she’d done. It seemed more and more like her attempt to atone had only earned her greater penance. Maybe it would have been better if she’d let the elf die, rather than to bring her back as a shell of what she’d once been. “Nariana,” the warlock finally whispered. “Your name is Nariana.”

o-o-o-o-o-o-o

“Hnnnngghahhahhh~!” Nyx wailed out, biting her lower lip as she finally finished the final words of her story, her back arching and her breathing heavy from the ruthlessly sustained stroking and fingering she’d been enduring this entire time. No sooner did she finish the story that she “finished” in another way, her entire slim, pale body twitching and contorting as she shot several thick jets of seed into the air, raining down to make a mess of little Lina’s face and hair, drawing a surprised squeal from the goblin girl.

Dabbing a bit off of her lip and licking it, Lina’s squeak of protest faded to a contented moan, taking another long lick at Nyx’s throbbing dick before looking up at the sin’dorei again. “Yummy,” she purred, thinking on what she’d heard for a moment before continuing. “So, let me get this straight... you put some of yourself in mom... resurrected her... then told her she was a death knight so she wouldn’t blame you for killing her?”

Panting, Nyx hesitated before offering a small, shamed nod.

“And that’s the reason you are, the... way... you are?”

Nymphixia hesitated even longer this time, catching her breath and looking down at the little goblin’s face. Damn, she was smart for being so young. Then, at long last, her confession was complete. “You can never let her know. She’ll blame herself.”

“That’s up for debate,” Lina contested, but then nodded. “I won’t tell her. Your secret’s safe with me, Auntie Nyx. Actually it explains a lot.”

“Like?”

“I was always under the impression that death knights couldn’t get pregnant, for one. And yeah, there was some ‘magic dick’ stuff going on, but... still.”

The warlock shifted up into a sitting position, awkwardly covering herself up with her robe once more, though the evidence of her sin was already starting to dry in Lina’s hair. “Even smarter than I thought. Yes -- Nariana is more living than dead, now. I don’t truly know the limits of what she’s capable of, what she can endure, what she can create. She’s unique, in her way. The product of tragedy and... a lot of guilt.”

“I want to say ‘don’t blame yourself,’ but....”

“...It’s my fault. I know. I’ve been living with the physical manifestation of that blame ever since. It was a price I told myself I’d pay, and I’m glad to pay it.”

Lina nodded slowly, her expression more somber now as she hopped up onto the side of the bed, thinking deeply for another moment before finally jumping down onto the floor, strapping her soft blue lambskin boots back in place and glancing back at Nyx before heading towards the door. “It’s getting late. I don’t think Syl or Sora are gonna get any sleep tonight, but we probably should. We have a lot to take care of tomorrow.”

“Smart and responsible, too,” Nyx said with a small, weak smile. “Very well, then, little one. Rest, and... I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Lina nodded and offered a small smile in return, reaching for the doorknob before she was interrupted.

“Oh, and Lina.”

The half-goblin turned slightly to look back at the warlock, one brow arched in a silent question.

Nyx’s smile widened into something more genuine. “Thanks for the handjob.”