Seekers of the Epitaph: World of Azeroth

by Xarmar13

Side Chapter: Hearts of Stone

Thanatas exited the warchief’s throne room. Since Thrall had given the order to have her blackmailed trainees to journey to Blackrock Mountain, she smiled to herself as she was glad that everything was going according to plan.

She was still uncertain on the status of the other two who have yet to meet with Sophia’s party. Since neither she nor Sophia had any updates on their whereabouts, Thanatas decided to open a link to Twilight. “Hey Twilight, are there any updates as to the other objectives outside of Sophia’s party?”

“Let me check…” A few keystrokes and some thoughtful humming from the mare later, she came back with an answer to her query. “It looks like they are in Kalimdor traveling south from Ashenvale. They are currently in the Stonetalon Mountains region.”

Thanatas remembered the Stonetalon Mountains as a highly mountainous region where the Horde and Alliance held a presence. The rugged landscape had numerous small forests in the valleys but a cartel of resource plundering goblins called the Venture Company was deforesting the land. They also set fire to a vale in the southwest part of the region and now the place was overrun by enraged fire elementals.

Twilight continued, “I’m not sure what happened to Pinkie, but it seems like she’s exhibiting high levels of void corruption. Huh? What is this reading? Is the corruption alive? But how? The corruption readings are off the charts!”

Thanatas thought for a moment about the readings before her eyes widened in realization. “Twilight, whatever you do, do not investigate those readings! You will risk your mental health doing that. If I’m right, then it sounds like my daughter is with them. She may be using Pinkie as a vessel for some reason. Whatever the case, it’s best to leave them be for now and hope we come across them later.”

“...Alright,” Twilight said hesitantly. “It looks like Fluttershy is with her. I’m guessing that Violetta roped her into accompanying them south.”

“Violetta will be hunting the major void parasites that were forced beneath Azeroth’s surface eons ago.” Thanatas sighed as some concern for her daughter surfaced. “I’ll contact you later for an update. As for the four ELF members, they seem to be behaving themselves so far.”

As Thanatas cut the link, she suddenly had a feeling that someone was watching her. As she felt around for the souls in the area, her eyes widened as she discovered who was watching her. She groaned as she looked down a hidden alley away from the eyes of the typical Orgrimmar resident.

Down the alley she spotted who appeared to be a human with blonde hair that went almost past her back. Her choice of clothing was odd at best. She wore a pair of baggy pants like what a desert dweller would wear with an aqua-colored half skirt that flowed in non-existent wind. She wore a sand-colored shirt and a pair of steel gauntlets that extended up her arms. Atop her head was a tiara that was made of a red-colored metal with a floating jewel above the front that was on fire.

Thanatas sighed. As if problems with her daughter weren’t bad enough, now she had to deal with her younger sister. If she were alive, Thanatas would be having a migraine. “What do you want, Zoias? You know I can sense your soul so if you were trying to get the drop on me, I suggest you give up trying.”

Zoias regarded her sister with a smile, “Oh, I knew that you could sense me, just as I can sense the graveyard soil that composes your disguise as well as the drop in temperature in the air wherever you go.”

Thanatas raised an eyebrow at her sister, who had always been a strange one since she was an adult among the family and she had still yet to embrace an affinity. At least, until now if Zoias’ declaration meant something. “So I take it you finally chose an affinity?”

Zoias nodded, “Sure have! I decided to check in with you before I began my journey to gain the power I need to fully embrace it.”

Thanatas kept her eyebrow raised, “I hope you have a plan. We can’t help you with whatever it is since we have our own missions to accomplish.”

Another nod, “I do, and it involves an earth totem that I won off a drunk shaman in a card game.”

With a huff and a dismissive wave of her hand, Thanatas walked out of the alley, “Fine, just don’t do anything too crazy. It’s only the first year and I’d rather a few more pass before shenanigans start happening.”

Zoias shrugged before she pulled out the totem. She could sense the earthen energies radiating from it and in order for her to reach her objective, she needed to reverse the energies, an act that sent many shamans to their doom. She had plenty of knowledge about how Azerothian shamans worked their magic and their reverence toward the elements.

Unlike the usual shamans though, Zoias was wanting much more than that.

Planting the totem into the ground, the earthen energies started to radiate as it awaited its new master’s commands. She channeled her own energies into the totem and pushed back the energies until they reversed back into the earth.

As she hoped, the earth began to sink around her as she was pulled into it. Within moments she was completely submerged.

---

Zoias soon emerged from the rocky ceiling of her destination. Once she was through, she began to plummet from thousands of meters above the floor. She cheered and whooped as she was in freefall toward the rapidly approaching floor.

Once she was only a few hundred meters from rock bottom, she used the air available in the realm to create wings which slowed her descent and landed safely on the ground.

Zoias took a few moments to gaze in wonder at the majesty that was the elemental plane of earth, Deepholm. Countless earthen spires as far as the eye could see with the tips occasionally breaking apart and held in mid air before pulling back together. Rocks and boulders floated around by what was likely the ever-shifting magnetism that was present in the realm. Lighting up the realm were piles of minerals that glowed brightly of a jade color. A towering temple sat at the very center of the realm that stretched all the way to the ceiling like a load-bearing column.

Zoias could sense a powerful and terrifying presence within the temple. Of course, she figured that her sister would probably warn her to leave the being alone since they would be dealt with in due time.

Zoias’ destination was in the northern reaches of the realm. An overlook that served as the best place for the lord of the realm to observe it. Flapping her air wings, Zoias took to the air again and headed north, avoiding the magnetic rocks and floating ruins on the way.

She spotted a pair of adolescent dragons, also known as drakes, flying her way. These drakes were made of stone and were somehow able to fly despite that. One drake opened its mouth to devour her but the human rapidly descended to avoid the attack. She ascended again fast enough to where she delivered a hard uppercut to the dragon’s jaw which sent the beast flailing out of control toward the ground when the impact caused its body to flip upside down.

The other drake tried to attack Zoias with its talons but she hovered to the side to avoid the strike. She then grabbed one of its wings and tugged hard enough to cause the drake’s momentum to halt. The drake was stunned from the sudden jolt but that was long enough for Zoias to shift herself toward the drake’s back and place herself there. She wrapped her arms around the drake’s neck and approached whatever hole on its head that counted for an ear. “Take me to the throne or I’ll shatter you against the rock face!” she threatened.

The drake looked Zoias in the eye and a sense of primal fear overcame it. It gulped before acquiescing to its new rider, flying toward the realm’s overlook.

She soon came upon the entrance to the overlook where she set the drake down. The creature landed gently as it didn’t want to anger its rider into smashing it to pieces.

Zoias dismounted the drake before it flew off, leaving her standing before the tall entrance guarded by two giant earth elementals. Both were bipedal and, unlike regular earth elementals that were composed of different pieces of rock, these were made of a single giant piece of living rock shaped roughly like a humanoid. Both were composed of the black rock that made up the whole realm while one had small shards of glowing jade rock while the other had giant crystals of jade sticking out of his back and head.

The one on the left with the smaller shards was the first to speak as the two observed Zoias. “What is this? Some small fleshling dares to bring herself before two of the Stonemother’s Stone Lords? Such audacity!” The voice was deep and rumbling.

“She shall soon regret coming here! I will squash her into paste for her arrogance!” the other shouted with a deep and gravelly voice.

In order to get what she wanted without undue conflict, Zoias knew that she needed to do what she could to earn their favor. She knelt down before the two Stone Lords which gave them pause as they narrowed their eyes at the fleshling and left them curious as to what she intended. “Great Stone Lords of Deepholm, I humbly request an audience with the Stonemother. I wish to make a deal with her that would greatly interest her.”

“Hah,” the crystal-burdened elemental scoffed. “What could a tiny fleshling like you possibly offer that would be of interest to the Stonemother?”

“I do not have the offering yet, I am simply here to provide the bargain before I retrieve someone who was lost to her countless millennia ago. I only wish to ensure that she upholds her end of the bargain when I fulfill mine. What I offer should be fitting for the price paid.”

The two Stone Lords looked at each other before glaring down at the confident-looking fleshling before them. After a few moments, the shard-laden giant slowly stomped the ground hard enough that a pile of rocks leapt up and took the shape of a standard earth elemental about the size of Zoias. “Inform the Stonemother of what has been spoken by this fleshling,” he ordered.

The elemental skittered into the cave. The three waited in silence for several minutes before a deep, bellowing and feminine voice emerged from the cavern. “Let them through, I will humor this one just this once but do not let it out of your sight!”

Hearing this, the two Stone Lords parted to allow passage for Zoias into the inner sanctum of the Stonemother. The human walked respectfully inside the cavern.

The inside was filled with colorful rocks and crystals. The outermost stone in the area farthest from the throne in the back of the cavern was a deep purple. Closer to the throne was a number of hills of white stone with orange crystals growing from them. The throne itself was a stone slab in between a pair of braziers with red crystals hovering over them. The back was a large cluster of scarlet gems.

Zoias walked to the center of the chamber to behold the Stonemother herself. While she was slightly smaller than the Stone Lords, her presence carried far more weight than the giants. She was composed of brown stone with her short brown skirt being decorated with purple crystals. Her legs were short and stubby to the point of being nearly non-existent. She was always floating off the ground and the area underneath her feet was showered by purple crystals. Her torso appeared to compose over seventy percent of her overall body with her gut resembling a massive boulder and her breasts half as large as her gut and covered only by her long, purple crystalline hair. On her chest was a pendant that was a large stone circle with five purple crystals sticking out of it. Her broad shoulders had a field of purple crystals sticking out of them while her arms were almost as short as her legs were while her hands were almost comically small compared to the rest of her body. She had a face that resembled an overweight ugly woman with her double chin and her teeth that looked like a dentist’s nightmare of crooked and uneven teeth along with a pair of large earlobes.

“You now stand before Therazane, Elemental Lord of Earth and mother to all earth elementals. Speak your proposal and do not test me any more than you are now as I am sorely tempted to bury you where no one will find you for your arrogance.”

Zoias kneeled before Therazane. She briefly recalled the report that her sister made on the denizens of Azeroth. Among them were the four Elemental Lords who ruled primordial Azeroth since long before the Old Gods invaded.

Therazane the Stonemother was the most loving and patient of the four, but her patience was matched by her cruelty on the battlefield. She was known for waiting her enemies out until fatigue settled in before she crushed them with the force of the land itself.

Neptulon the Tidehunter was a cunning strategist who would have his enemies weaken each other before moving in and finishing them off.

Al’akir the Windlord believed in disrupting the enemies’ ranks from within through chaos and distrust.

Of the four, Ragnaros the Firelord was the most brutal and most powerful of the four Elemental Lords. Brute force was his way of waging a war. Always angry. Always raging. Ragnaros was the type who wouldn’t stop until he destroyed everything in his path.

Choosing her words carefully, she began. “Great Stonemother, I have come into possession of a titan-made device that mimics the same power that bound you and all of the other elementals to the Elemental Plane.”

“We have no interest in returning to the surface at this time. If that is what you propose then begone,” Therazane dismissed.

“You misunderstand my intentions, Stonemother. It is not that I wish to free you and your elementals, but to bind a certain elemental who escaped the Titans’ gaze and bring them home to Deepholm.”

The room was silent for several moments. The Elemental Lord was briefly shocked that such a proposal had been dropped on her doorstep, but she recovered quickly. “You intend to bring my daughter Theradras home to me? I will not tolerate such mockery–”

“I can assure you that I am quite serious about this. I am fully aware that you would see her safe return to you. Though I hope you can forgive me if I rough her up a little before she comes home. I doubt that she will return quietly.”

“Hmph, if that is your intention then I won’t mind her coming home with a few cuts and dents.” Therazane narrowed her eyes and gave the human a displeased look. “What do you wish from me in exchange for her safe return?”

Now they reached the most unpleasant part of the conversation, Zoias knew what she wanted and knew that she would have to do something spectacular in order to make the exchange fair. What she wanted she would want from all four Elemental Lords eventually. “What I wish for in exchange is a piece of your essence.

Therazane was shocked again. The fleshling had just requested a lot from her, but at the same time, she was offering to return one who she gave part of herself to in her creation. One piece of herself for another, a fair exchange. The glare she gave the human was scathing but Zoias didn’t back down.

Therazane relented her gaze and took a moment to compose herself. “Very well, as long as my daughter is returned to me alive and well, I shall uphold my end of the deal. Now begone, and do not return without my daughter.”

Zoias nodded and turned to face the edge of the overlook. Deploying her wings of air again she leapt out of the cavern and into the open fields below.

Returning to Azeroth from the Elemental Plane of Earth was easy with her totem. The difficult part was that she needed the totem planted in a more precise location if she wanted to emerge where she wanted to be. The wrong place would place her in a far away region at best, a separate continent at moderate and the bottom of the sea at worst. Since Azeroth was mostly ocean, the worst case scenario had the highest chance of occurring.

Thankfully, Zoias had a solution to that as she touched the rocky floor and concentrated until she had a vision of where she would end up. Using this ability, she was able to find a location where she would end up near her destination.

A few troggs made of rock got in her way but were dispatched quickly when she punched the ground and a series of earthen spikes burst from the ground and impaled them.

With the area clear, she planted the earth totem into the rock and reversed its energies again, pulling her back to the surface.

---

Desolace. Once a beautiful and fertile region, the lands were stripped of life due to the folly of the tauren when they had mistaken the daughter of an Elemental Lord as the Earthmother that the people worship.

Princess Theradras slumbered for eons after the Titans banished all of her kind to the Elemental Planes. She was one of the few who evaded banishment. Over a millennium before the coming of the modern times, the tauren mistakenly awoke the ravenous elemental princess who proceeded to devour all life from the region, turning it into a desolate wasteland devoid of all but the most hardy wildlife.

Zoias emerged from the earth in the southern part of the dead region near the road. Looking around, she saw a mountain range to the north. Feeling the vibrations of the earth, she sensed the presence of what seemed to be a village nearby.

According to her sister’s report on the region, the village was most likely a centaur village. The half equine humanoids were very numerous in the region. Which made sense since the mother of the centaurs on Kalimdor, Theradras, lived here too. The report mentioned that the earth elemental princess fell in love with one of the sons of the demigod Cenarius and the centaurs were the product of that union. Sadly, the report also mentioned that the son of Cenarius was murdered by his own children and left Theradras to grieve over her lover’s corpse for centuries.

Beyond a small pass to the east of her current location were some ruins that were inhabited by remnants of the Burning Legion on Azeroth. The demons there lacked leadership so they were not perceived as a real threat at this time.

To the west was the coastline where life fought back against the lifeless region. The breeze of the sea encouraged the growth of grass and trees. The local makura, a race of lobster people who looked more like giant lobsters than displaying any humanoid traits, were seen scuttling around the revitalized area. There was also a Horde fishing village nearby.

Zoias turned her attention to a pass in the northern mountains. Beyond that was her destination.

Before she began her trek, she spotted a night elf and a gnome emerging from the ruins in the east. They looked like they had just been in a fight which was understandable since they just walked through a den of demons. She could also sense the presence of her niece among them so she ignored them and proceeded up the mountain pass.

It wasn’t long before she spotted a pair of centaur guarding the pass. The reports indicated that they belonged to the Maraudine Clan who were charged with guarding the vast caverns beneath the surface. The clans came to call the caverns a sacred place called Maraudon. The inner sanctum of the caverns was her ultimate location.

Since she had no reason to be bothering the centaur with guarding the place and she wasn’t assisting some adventurers, unlike her sister and cousin, Zoias cast a spell that melded herself with the land and allowed her to move past the centaurs from beneath their hooves without their notice.

The entrance to the caverns was carved from stone. A huge statue of the hunched-over upper body of a centaur wielding a seven-headed spear, three pairs of heads on opposing sides of the shaft, served as the entrance. A pair of thick stone doors blocked entry.

Zoias went under the door with her spell. Bypassing the Maraudine centaur inside, she crossed a bridge and down a flight of stairs and through a winding tunnel until she came to a fork in the path. To the left was an area marked by purple crystals and the right side was marked by orange crystals. The central route was decorated by a pair of centaur statues but led to a dead end unless you had a special staff that opened a portal to the inner sanctum.

The path led to a small altar in an otherwise empty room. Two more centaur statues stood at either side of a short hallway that led inside. The altar was a stone square barely an inch above the floor. Four braziers decorated the corners of the altar.

Zoias touched the stone platform and concentrated on the residual energies in the room. Thankfully the staff needed to bridge the inner sanctum with her current location was druidic in nature so tracing the energies through the earth was easier. It wasn’t long before she discovered the exit point.

Using an earth spell she knew, Zoias enclosed herself in a pillar of earth and sank into the ground.

At her destination two things happened, a pillar of earth emerged and the loud sound of water splashed away from the earthen eruption. The pillar collapsed to reveal the human who took a moment to gather her bearings.

The inner sanctum of Maraudon was a lot more verdant than the entire region of Desolace and more than the coastline. The water she was standing in looked clean and pure and sensing the quality of the water confirmed it. Looking behind her she could sense water that was defiled with toxins which somehow became pure as they approached the waterfall that she stood atop of. She had to wonder if this was the work of the son of Cenarius keeping the area pure and vibrant even in death.

She could think about that later. Rushing ahead, she jumped over the waterfall and plummeted thirty feet into the waters below. She then swam a short distance to a ledge and climbed up on it. From the ledge the water was still up to her ankles.

Looking around, Zoias quickly caught sight of a number of large hydras wandering the area. A few stone pillars were holding the chamber up. There were also a number of flowers whose leaves were catching any water that fell on them.

Zoias didn’t care enough to mess with the hydras so she melded into the cavern floor and snuck past the hydras. She also snuck past some subterranean dinosaurs who crawled on the ground on six legs and had dorsal fins on their backs as large as their bodies.

The cavern started to ramp upward and out of the water. She passed by a group of earth elementals made of white stone. The elementals sensed her presence but were unable to do anything since she was beneath the surface.

Eventually, she came across a pair of stone elemental giants that were almost as large as the Stone Lords of Deepholm. Zoias knew that the giants could knock her out of her spell by stomping the ground hard enough so she surfaced before the giants could stomp.

One giant reacted to her presence by tossing a boulder at the human. However, a simple punch broke the boulder into gravel.

Before the giants could continue their attack, Zoias tried for a diplomatic solution. “Hold stone giants, I seek an audience with Princess Theradras.”

“The princess is not to be disturbed! Begone, fleshling!” one giant bellowed.

“Even if I come on behalf of the Stonemother herself?” Zoias offered.

“Even more so! The princess has declared that she will have nothing to do with the Stonemother!” the other giant bellowed.

Zoias sighed in resignation and shrugged, “Well, I tried.” She unleashed a blast of fire at one giant which ignited the moss that was growing on his body. While the two giants were distracted by the fire, Zoias recast her earthen meld spell and proceeded deeper into the cavern, passing another group of dinosaurs.

She soon found herself in a huge chamber that was lit by sunlight from the surface. At the bottom of the chamber was a large underground lake with a massive crocolisk swimming around. She found herself on a walkway suspended above the lake that was guarded by numerous stone giants. At the far end of the walkway was her destination, a gravesite of the dead son of Cenarius that was marked by the being’s own antlers. She could barely make out her objective in the distance.

First she needed to deal with the giants guarding their princess. Using the moisture from the lake, Zoias conjured some clouds and introduced a powerful electrical charge to them. With enough of a charge built up, she fired a bolt of lightning at the ground beneath the giants’ feet. The blast damaged the walkway and caused the ground beneath their feet to crumble. The giants couldn’t react fast enough and fell into the lake below.

Zoias repeated the process with the rest of the giants in the chamber. Some tried to rush to her and some tried throwing boulders at her, but she corrected the angle of the bolts to deal with the attacking giants while smashing the boulders with her fists.

She soon found herself at the gravesite and beheld the princess herself. She took after her mother in terms of body shape but not as ridiculously as her mother. Her arms and legs were more proportional to her body. She also wore more clothing than her mother did. Her brown skirt was decorated with sticks of bamboo. Her bra was tied together by a large emerald. The piece of clothing in question matched her hair in alternating shades of light and moderate brown. The stone she was composed of was light gray unlike her mother’s dark brown complexion. She wore gold bracelets on all four of her arms and two were inlaid with skulls while the other two were inlaid with emeralds. Her head was composed of three faces with the central face having tusks pointed upward like orc teeth. Her emerald green eyes shone on her middle face while the other two had emeralds on their foreheads. She also wore geta on her feet.

“How dare you invade the grounds of my beloved! I shall crush your bones!” Theradras bellowed.

Zoias tried the diplomatic approach again. “Greetings princess, I was sent here by your mother to deliver a message to you: It’s time to come home.”

Theradras let out a deep belly laugh as she heard that. “You seek to send me to that realm the usurpers banished my mother to? She will have to send someone stronger than you, fleshling. I did not escape pursuit by the titans and received injuries as a result only for some agent of my mother to finish the job they failed to do. She can erode in that place for all I care, here I am free to do what I want.”

“Your actions destroyed this region,” Zoias countered flatly.

“Who cares, the usurpers already remade the land once, why can’t I?”

“And it’s that attitude that makes it clear that you need to go back to your mother.”

Theradras growled and began repeatedly stomping the ground and creating numerous shockwaves which shook the cavern. Zoias took to the air with her air wings to avoid this attack. Knowing that her foe could fly, Theradras picked up a boulder and hurled it at the human. However, Zoias grabbed the boulder and threw it back at the princess. Theradras was not expecting return fire so the boulder shattered against her face. She yelped in surprise and pain.

The elemental princess then took to grabbing numerous boulders with her four arms and throwing them at Zoias who gracefully dodged three then hurled the fourth back at Theradras who blocked the counterattack with her arms.

Zoias pulled out the titan banishment device and activated it. The device needed to charge a little before it could work on Theradras but she knew how to distract her in the meantime. She landed on the ground while the princess was still holding her arms defensively. She tried to punch the human but the human was faster as she struck Theradras in her large gut with her fist which sent her flying to the back of the cavern.

Theradras looked down at where she was punched and noticed a large dent in her stomach with a number of cracks surrounding it. She stared daggers at the fleshling before gritting her teeth as she worked to fight through the pain. She would need to devour the life from the sanctum to recover from a blow like that.

However, Theradras took too long in trying to recover as the device above her activated and sent waves of light in her direction. She didn’t feel any pain from the light so she wondered if the device scanned her. She quickly got her answer which filled her with dread. [Unbound earth-type elemental detected. Database records indicate all Azerothian elementals are bound to elemental planes based on type. Beginning correction of discrepancy,] the device said.

“No!” Theradras yelled as she tried to flee the device. However, she was too slow as the device struck her with another beam of light before she began to feel her feet sinking into the ground. She struggled to find anything solid to grab to help stall her inevitable fall into the realm of earth, but every rock, every mound of soil, the walls of the cave itself, would give her no purchase as the land itself betrayed her as she sank deeper and deeper into the land. She screamed against the futility of her situation as her torso fully sunk into the ground and soon her head followed.

Once Theradras was fully consumed by the land, the device stopped glowing. [Discrepancy corrected. Returning to standby mode.] The device fell to the floor of the cavern where Zoias caught it before it landed. With the princess banished to Deepholm, she pulled out her totem to return to the realm to claim her reward.

Before she did, a spirit manifested from the nearby grave. The figure had the upper body of a night elf and the lower body of a stag deer. The spirit’s arms became branches toward the hands and his antlers matched the ones marking the grave.

The spirit nodded to Zoias in gratitude. “Thank you for freeing me from the curse placed upon me. Now my spirit can return to the Emerald Dream to rest.” The spirit then faded away.

Shrugging, Zoias activated the totem and reversed its energies again to deposit her into Deepholm again. Using her wings of air, she began her descent to the floor.

Surprisingly, as she looked down toward the floor, she noticed Therazane with two of her Stone Lords flanking her. One had crimson shards growing from him while the other was composed of white stone with brown crystals growing from him. She spotted Theradras with her legs imprisoned in the stone of the realm.

Zoias soon came close enough to catch the conversation occurring. “It would seem that I will need to teach you some manners, young lady. You will find no solace from our former enslavers here,” Therazane said.

“It doesn’t matter where we are, they will find us. How can you turn your back on our masters?” Theradras demanded.

“I am not a fool unlike those idiots, Al’akir and Ragnaros, who gave their loyalty to the Old Gods simply because we lost the war against them. I will have nothing to do with what goes on outside of my realm.”

“You were always too passive for your own good, mother!” Theradras spat, putting extra venom in the last word.

“But I am also the most patient, my daughter. In time, I will train this mentality out of you, even if it takes hundreds of thousands of years. Now that you’re here, we have all the time in the world to talk.”

Zoias soon landed before the elemental rulers before she quickly knelt before Therazane, waiting patiently for her reward. The Stonemother frowned in disappointment that she would now have to uphold her end of the bargain. However, having her beloved daughter returned to her, despite her injuries which could be fixed with time, would make the exchange much more bearable.

Therazane summoned a double-bladed battle ax. Her small hands barely wrapped around the handle. The head was a stone ring decorated with dark purple crystals. The shaft and blades were composed of the sharpened stones of Deepholm. The blades had purple crystals inlaid in them. The toe of the blades were much longer than the beards, suggesting that the ax could be used as a two-pronged spear as well. Runes were inscribed along the shaft and the head.

The Stonemother tossed the weapon to Zoias’ feet. The weapon shrank to the human’s size. “You have upheld your end of the bargain and I must now uphold mine. That weapon was forged by my very essence, Terrakios, the Stones’ Embrace. Take it and begone from my realm.”

Zoias quietly picked up the ax which melted into her hands, much to the elementals’ surprise. She then turned away from the elementals and began walking away.

“Before you leave however, I need to confirm one last thing with you,” Therazane suddenly said. Zoias stopped and turned to face the Stonemother again for the sake of manners. “I have a feeling that your quest does not simply end with me. I take it that you will make the same request of my fellow Elemental Lords?”

Zoias nodded, “In time and when the opportunity presents itself. But yes, I will seek their essence as well.”

“Then in the spirit of generosity, I shall give you this warning. The others will not part with their essence as easily as I did. Neptulon might do so in exchange for dealing with his enemies, but I doubt that Al’akir and Ragnaros will part with theirs, not without slaying them anyway. Though you’d be doing me a favor if you did kill them since I never liked them anyway.”

The human respectfully bowed to the Stonemother, “I thank you for your generous words, Stonemother.”

With the power of the Stonemother in her hands, Zoias found that she didn’t need the totem anymore so she cast the object aside. Using her new powers, she concentrated on where she wanted to be on Azeroth’s surface before she encased herself in stone then disappeared beneath it.

Until an opportunity presented itself, Zoias would have to wait. If her sister’s report was correct, then it would be a few more years before such a time came. She would have to find something to do in the meantime.

Author's Note:

I have referred to this chapter as a side chapter since it didn't involve the ELF or the reincarnated 6 but I felt that this chapter held importance as the main purpose was to make a small change to canon events. Basically, sparing Theradras from being killed by adventurers by sending her back to her mother.

Also, the matter of Therazane's weapon was completely made up. In truth, nobody really knows if she had a weapon or not unlike Ragnaros and Al'akir, same with Neptulon.

Next time: A 3-parter! The reincarnated 6 take on what I believe is still hands down, the largest 5-man dungeon ever designed in the game.

P.S.: As for the matter of the images I put in...I REGRET NOTHING!

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[Black--Soul]

Not exactly the most pretty females to exist, but being beautiful is something that depends on the beholder.