User:GoldenYak/Chronicle/Volume One/Chapter Five
Related to Worlds of Warcraft - Chronicle of the Titan Worlds
Volume One, Chapter Five - The Gift of Azeroth
Birth of the Titan Worlds
Azeroth drifted in space above the star for what seemed like an age, falling into an exhausted slumber, regaining her strength. The constellar were gone - their powers had been burnt out in guiding the final deathblow against Sargeras. The remaining naaru watched over the Final Titan, while their dimensional ships brought the surviving Army of the Light to her surface. Draenei prayed to the Light to aid Azeroth, and were joined by legions of starlight warriors. Overhead, white dragons wheeled through the skies, their white-fire breath burning away any lingering clouds of fel corruption. Elementals moved across and through the Titan in vast numbers, repairing the damage wrought by Sargeras. At last, when every mountain was rebuilt, every forest regrown, every sea cleansed, the elementals joined the Army of Light and Azeroth's once-mortal children, solemnly and silently watching over them. Ethereals, ever pragmatic and practical, spent their time laboring over the surviving star-vessels until each once was restored to perfect working order. Still, the ethereals found reasons to linger around Azeroth, delaying their departure. Finally, when the worldsoul of Azeroth stirred towards waking, and her still-slumbering consciousness was roused enough to reach out to the gathered multitudes and make her wishes known.
The ethereals and the naaru reconfigured many dimensional fortresses to become portals through the Twisting Nether to other worlds. With the demons decimated, Nether-travel was safer than it had ever been. The gathered races that formed the Army of Light would be able to safely return home and rebuild, and the ethereals would remain in contact with them all, binding the people of the cosmos forever. No world would ever stand alone against a threat again. After the Army of Light had dispersed, after her elemental and once-mortal children returned to sleep within her worldsoul, Azeroth finally awoke. Her strength was fully renewed, and she blazed with cosmic energy greater than before. A task lay before her, one that would tax her in ways even greater than her conflict with Sargeras.
Spreading her cosmic wings, Azeroth soared across the solar system. She gathered up the smouldering fragments of the broken Titan Infernals, the ruined bodies of her Pantheon siblings. Her energy flowed across them, snuffing out the last traces of fel corruption. The ruined fragments still held some semblance of Titan form, some echo of grandeur and majesty that had belonged to the beings they once were. It would not be enough for Azeroth to realize her goal, but it was a start. Azeroth flew on, combing the space around her sun, the Titan fragments trailing in her wake. She gathered up the fragments of her former moons. She flew to the cracked and broken worlds that she had shared the system with, worlds that had been shattered during her conflict with the Legion. These worlds had never held life, had never possessed the correct balance of energies necessary to bring forth even primitive elemental beings, but still they had held seeds of cosmic power. They would serve Azeroth as vital material. Small rocky worlds were shattered for their minerals, great gas giants were stripped of their vapors... centuries passed as Azeroth slowly gathered the matter of her solar system, the foundations of her grand design. Finally, after a millennia had passed, she was ready.
Azeroth spun the gathered matter together in vast discs and focused her cosmic energy upon them. One by one, six discs formed and began to collapse, their cores glowing hot with the monumental forces being worked upon them. Gravity flared, the spinning cores devouring the matter of their discs. Around the star they spun, growing and blazing brightly, collapsing from vast discs into small but growing spheres. All the while, Azeroth poured cosmic energy into them, drawing upon the essence of creation and sending it spilling into the six spheres taking shape. Six wondrous and varied worlds took form - mountains and chasms, deep oceans and hollow caverns, hills and plains and valleys. In the earliest ages of the cosmos, it was only by sheer chance that worlds had formed with the proper balance of cosmic forces to nurture a Titan worldsoul. But now, Azeroth had by design formed six worlds that would each serve as the perfect incubators for a nascent Titan. Each one shone with the energies of creation, brimming with possibility. Fertile soil, waiting only for the seeds to be planted.
Reaching deep within herself, Azeroth called forth the lingering spirits of the Titan Pantheon. When the Pantheon had fallen at Sargeras' hands, the Titan Norgannon had used his vast sorcerous powers in an effort to preserve their living spirits, and his magic had sent the souls of the Titans soaring through the great dark in a desperate bid to reach safety on the world that Azeroth had once been. The distance had been vast and the effort had been nearly doomed from the start - only the barest wisps of the Titans souls had managed to reach Azeroth, each spirit-echo finding purchase in the bodies of beings constructed by the Titans known as Keepers. Each Keeper had become the vessel for the last tiny spark of a Titan's soul, in most cases unaware of what exactly had taken place, feeling only some faded memory from their Titan creator. Nevertheless, these lingering traces survived within the Keepers, and as they returned to Azeroth's worldsoul, so too had the spirit-echoes of the Pantheon.
It was these spirits that Azeroth now called forth. One by one, the fragments of the former Pantheon rose out of Azeroth's worldsoul and were infused into the six newly-shaped worlds that drifted around Azeroth's former star. As each new worldsoul was infused into the planet that would nurture it, that would in time become its very form, Azeroth whispered their names to them, reminding them of what they had been, and promising them what the future would hold for them. The first world was Amanthal, the Realm of Storms, born of Highfather Aman'thul. The second world was Edenar, the Realm of Wilds, born of Eonar the Life-Binder. Next was Golggath, Realm of Waters, born from Golgannesh, Lord of Sea and Sky. Fourth was Gannon, Realm of the Arcane, born of Norgannon, the Keeper of Magic. Fifth was Khazgar, Realm of Stone, born of Khaz'Goroth, the Forger of Worlds. And the sixth world was Aggmar, Realm of Flame, born from Aggramar, the Great Champion of the Pantheon. Those who had fallen would be reborn.
The six seeds were planted, and one day untold millennia from now they would grow into six new Titans, and a new Pantheon would emerge to tend the cosmos. The six newly formed worldsouls, slumbering in nascency, would need only one further thing to ensure they would develop into the wondrous beings that Azeroth knew they could become. They would need inhabitants - living beings who would grow and learn and thrive, who would cherish their homes and fight to protect them, their every breath nurturing the growth of the nascent Titan within their world. Azeroth reached deeply within herself again, drawing forth her memories and those of the Titans that she carried within her. In her mind, she saw the great Titan creation forges that the Pantheon had used to shape her world-self in its nascency and to create the vast ecosystem that had lived upon her surface. One each world, sprawling machine-complexes took shape, secluded in hidden valleys or buried deep beneath the world's surface. Construct creatures and artificial races took shape to operate and maintain the great edifices. Cosmic energies flowed through the machines and into the worlds themselves, sparking life in a thousand of cradles. One day these beings would spread across the newly made worlds, multiplying and advancing. Shaped by Azeroth's own memories, many of the new worlds inhabitants would resemble her own mortal children, while innumerable completely new creatures would arise shaped by the sleeping worldsouls.
At last, her work was complete. The six new worlds hung in the starry night, turning gently in their orbits around the sun. With one final silent farewell, a wordless thought that shone with love, Azeroth departed.
Into the Void
For an eternity, Azeroth flew. She was not wandering aimlessly, but moved with purpose. The Legion was defeated. Sargeras was no more. The Pantheon was reborn. All that remained was to ensure that there would be a future for them. A future for all the worlds of the cosmos.
At last, Azeroth came to her destination. She stood, impossibly, at the very edge of existence - before her, all things faded and swirled down into a great maelstrom of oblivion, a yawning maw of utter darkness and destruction. She was not alone. Joining her at the precipice of cosmic oblivion were thousands of naaru, many more than had been present at the battle with the Burning Legion. The naaru had not committed their full strength to that conflict, knowing that an even greater battle had lain ahead. Joining them were many thousands of dimensional vessels and other star-ships. The Army of the Light had spent all the ages that had passed since the great war with the Legion rebuilding their might, knowledge of their duty passed down countless generations. The naaru had gathered all those who were willing and able to face the darkness that threatened them all, the enemy that promised even greater horror than Sargeras and his Legion.
Within the screaming darkness was the Void, the dark underbelly of the cosmos where malefic entities of infinite malice and evil lay in wait, hungering for the time when they would devour the universe of light and reason that existed beyond their realm. They were the dark opposite of the Light of Creation, an unholy force of uncreation and anti-life. Within the Void, black suns shone over corpse-worlds of screaming bone and writhing flesh. Glaciers of black ice the size of galaxies creaked and groaned, bleeding cruelty from unfathomable angles as they drifted in oceans of murdered time. Sanity had no purchase there, and hope existed only to be flayed and devoured alive by hateful gods. Peering into this darkness had driven Sargeras over the brink of despair, and was the very thing that had sparked his Burning Crusade - a desperate effort to unmake a universe where the insane evil of the Void existed. While Sargeras had promised extinction for all living things, what the Void wanted for the cosmos was infinitely worse - not the peace of oblivion, but an eternity of torment and madness, where the Light did not exist and all things, all minds, all souls were the tortured play-things of the Lords of the Void. From within their black kingdom, these malevolent beings had sent forth their tendrils of influence into the cosmos for millennia, seeking cracks in the barriers separating the Void from the rest of existence. Worlds were seeded with their unholy creations, entire star-systems were swallowed by oceans of blackness and dragged screaming into the Void. While their efforts had touched only a minute fraction of the vast cosmos, far less than the ravages of the Burning Legion, the Void's presence in the universe was slowly growing.
The Void Lords knew that if they could seize and corrupt a nascent Titan they would have the means to pour their pollution into the cosmos in a great torrent. A Dark Titan, acting as an avatar of their will, could rend apart time and space and let the Void flow freely into the universe to devour it. In the ancient past they had sent their creations, the Old Gods, in an effort to corrupt Azeroth, an effort that had ultimately been thwarted both by the Titan Pantheon and her own mortal inhabitants. Now though, the Void Lords could sense the six new nascent Titans within the worlds Azeroth had created. Within the Void they drooled liquid insanity in vast black rivers, their hunger causing the black suns of the Void to shudder and scream. Given the chance, they would reach out from the darkness and pluck the six new Titan Worlds, twisting the growing Pantheon into their heralds. Azeroth did not intend to give them the chance. She would descend into the very heart of darkness, to seek out and battle the Void Lords themselves. Such malefic beings were possibly beyond defeat, but they could be fought, and by fighting them Azeroth and the Army of Light would keep their gaze forever turned away from the fragile mortal universe. And perhaps the Void Lords were not invincible - there was hope that even a darkness as terrible and profound as they could be banished, and that balance could be brought even to the Void. Bathed in radiance, the most powerful being in existence, Azeroth strode unafraid into the Void.
Epilogue - The Seventh World
The six Titan Worlds forged by Azeroth turned in their orbits around their shining star. Life on their surfaces grew and thrived, and newly born minds turned their gaze out at the cosmos and wondered, and dreamed. Millennia passed. On Amanthal, gryphons soared through roaring gales, their riders laughing and singing. In the steamy jungles of Aggmar, a pack of hunters struck at a colossal scaled beast, slashing and stabbing with spear and axe. Songs would be sung of their valor around roaring fires that night. In the depths of Golggath, coral cities of fantastic beauty grew, shaped by serpentine builders. On Khazgor, stout folk mined wealth from the deep earth. On Gannon, cities of light rose to encircle the world. On Edenar, a figure stood atop the summit of the tallest peak, looked out across a vast expanse of forest far as the eye could see, and gave a ringing primal cry to celebrate glorious life.
The six Titan Worlds turned.
And then, impossibly...
They were joined by a seventh.
The surface of the sun roiled and heaved. A vast shape within it stirred, breaching the burning expanse in a spray of celestial fire. Incredibly, impossibly, a massive figure rose up, tearing free of the star's surface. The Demon Titan. Sargeras. His colossal body, burnt black, shuddered with stirring life. A spark of hatred burned within the blazing Demon Titan's split heart, refusing to be snuffed. Refusing to end. Sargeras sensed what Azeroth had wrought, sensed the six Titan Worlds and the sleeping worldsouls of the new Pantheon within them. Not only had his hated enemy destroyed his armies and nearly killed him, she had sought to unmake his victory over his siblings. With anger and hatred devouring the final shreds of his sanity, Sargeras vowed that he too would be renewed. He would reignite his Burning Crusade once again, but this time he would not act to save the wretched universe from the chaotic torments of the Void. Instead, he would enact an even more terrible vengeance upon the universe in payment for his defeat. He would bring the cosmos not peaceful oblivion, but a hideous torment that would make even the Void Lords themselves quail in terror. But his strength was all but spent. To realize his vow, he would need to regain his might. He would need to sleep.
Sargeras' broken form crumbled as the hatred within him blazed. His body caved in upon itself, losing its humanoid shape. Fel blood gushed forth and formed oceans as he collapsed in upon himself. Sargeras became a world, a blackened hellscape whose surface blistered with fel geysers and volcanoes, a blazing core of pure fury at its heart. His raging spirit slumbered within, dreaming a dream of eternal hatred, of a future where the universe and all its beings would burn at his hand. He would sleep, and hate, and grow stronger. And though it would take him an eternity... he would have his revenge.
Thus did the world of Sargeron come to be.
Thus were the seven Titan Worlds born...
Additional Information and Sidebars
Sidebar - The Champion of the Light
At the edge of the Void, the Army of Light gathered around her, Azeroth sent out a call. From within the darkness, a single spark of light emerged, a winged figure blazing with white radiance. For millennia, this being had braved the darkness alone, its radiance a warding beacon against the malign influence of the Void. Now, the being's duty was done, and Azeroth called it to return home. For this being too was one of her own children, a once-mortal who had been born under starlight, who had cherished her as its beloved home, even when he had traveled to other worlds far from her. The winged being slipped through Azeroth's atmosphere and dove down, down to her surface. In a forested region once called Kalimdor, the winged being touched the surface and, with a sign, sank out of sight, rejoining with the worldsoul to be greeted by the waiting spirits of those who loved him and were loved by him.