Addiction

Six months earlier...

He'd lost something, that day. Waking to find her gone. He'd howled like a beast, tearing the cave apart, hoping she was merely hiding away, watching, waiting...but to no avail. After the outburst, he sat quietly on the stone bunk, staring off into the distance.

And outside, it was snowing, the soft flakes delicately kissing the earth. The food was still untouched. He ate it.

The next day he packed his belongings, leaving the small outpost behind, reporting to his superiors at Everlook and requesting a change of scenery. And oh, how they gave him one. It is your turn to go, they said. To serve.

In Outland.

Three weeks later...

He remembered his home every now and again, the green fields, the lush wilderness. Nothing prepared him for the moment he stepped through the Portal however, the wind screaming in his ears as the magic pulled him through, violently ripping him from one world and placing him elsewhere - he wondered, briefly, if this was how it had been for the orcs, all those years ago. If they'd felt this when they first moved to Azeroth and started their savage campaigns. It was enough to drive anyone mad...

Red sky, ripped in twain, the stars seeming to bleed on the greater canvas of the open air above, hot winds howling...he blinked, taking it all in, the portal towering darkly behind him. Alliance and horde alike screamed bloody vengeance as a pit lord threatened to smash the small outpost in twain, screaming rains of infernals and other noxious beasts ripping the forces like tissue paper. Little by little, they fought back, human and orc, night elf and tauren, troll and dwarf and gnome and forsaken...

Blood elf and draenei...

The air caught thick in his throat as he struggled with the yearning that kept catching him off guard at inopportune moments. No. Not here. Not now.

And so he found the flight master, taking his orders and beginning the long trek through the horrors the fel orcs and pit lords had made of what was once his home...

Two months later...

A throaty moan sang in the back of her throat as he pounded her from behind, hips pistoning mechanically, his eyes dark and brooding. He barely made a sound at all as she caroled her orgasm to the sky, pussy clenching him, inviting, milking - and he released his load into her with a thick grunt, holding her horns for support as he drilled relentlessly into her. As he pulled from her, she rolled over, satisfied and purring, bidding him to come lie with her, next to her-

-but he was already into his armor. Emotionless, he tossed a few coins onto the mattress and left the inn. She toyed with them, cooing softly at the shining discs, then glanced out the window at his retreating form. Moody, that one was. But he paid well.

Three months later...

Golden light blinded the creature, and it roared its displeasure to the sky, lifting its paws to swipe ineffectively at its eyes, opening them just in time to see the mighty hammer crack down on its skull-

Panting, he rose. There was no Light in this. The virtues that used to sing through his body, humming at him as he worked, lifting his spirits even as he killed, allowing him to bless those that had fallen at his hands....blood coated them now, thick rivulets of the stuff soaking into the hardened plate - now tinged with rose from the sheer amount of corpses he'd left lie in his wake. No Light, no virtue, where had the song gone...

He knew. He knew it every time he visited Shattrath, seeing those thrice-damned Scryer riding around the city like they owned it, seeing the females, their hips swaying provocatively even as they performed the most simple of tasks. The Aldor, a noble branch of his people, had called this place home countless years before those damned elves had shown up and taken court...

...and with every sway of hip and lithe step, with every fluid gesture and flip of dainty tongue, with every movement the females made, his guts yearned for one, one set of hips, one alabaster hand, one pair of glittering eyes...

A'dal knew. Somehow. The Naaru were all seeing, and he should have known it was coming...the being spoke to him, and him alone, chiming gently from within the central circle. Telling him to forget, to let the Light soothe him, embrace him once more - and the bell-like call was tinged with sadness for it knew there was no going back, not for this warrior of the Light. What had happened, the Naaru could not pluck from his mind, but he knew there was something missing, and as the paladin continued with task after task, emotionless and ever more brutal, A'dal could feel him slipping away...

It was in Shattrath that he saw her. He knew it was her, the shock of white hair, the smell of her hitting him sharply, leaving him breathless like a blow to the gut. She crossed the central square, head bent low, counting coins in her deft little hands and without thinking he began to cross the square, to follow, to capture her once more-

-stout polearms crossed in front of him, the two horde guards looking at him disdainfully as she stepped into a portal, whereabouts unknown, back to Azeroth. Dazed, he shook his head, bowing it in narrow apology to the guards and turning away.

That night he lay in a roughshod bed, unable to sleep, sweating-drenched, pale and trembling. His eyes stared unseeing at the ceiling above, visions of her, naked below him, soft lips opening to sing her triumphant release to the heavens - the burning in his gut grew tighter and tighter - why could she not leave him be? Why had the Light forsaken him? Why was she all he could imagine, all he could think of - he'd taken woman after woman, whore after whore where he could find them, traversing lands that were at once alien and oh-so-familiar, desperately trying to forget, and yet one glimpse of her and he was reduced to a wreck of a man, chest aching, the pressure building, something clicking into place with a silent snap-

His eyes closed.

Somewhere deep within his mind, the Light bade him come home.

He ignored it.


The week following...

The rain sluiced down over the rooftops of Booty Bay, the late night air humid and thick with heat. A lone goblin wiped down the bar in the Inn, humming a particularly dirty little tune to himself and grinning as he mentally tallied the night's profits. It had been a good evening. A very, very good evening. Everyone had staggered to obscenely overpriced beds, guts full of obscenely overpriced food and beverage, too drunk to care and singing the whole damn time. At what cost? A tauren had upended a table. Easy fix. The goblin rummaged behind the counter for something to mend the leg with. Very soon people would be winding their way down for breakfast, hangovers or no, and it was best to be prepared.

A loud crack of thunder followed by the sharp crack of the door slamming back on its hinges, causing the goblin to jump, nearly cracking his head on the old wooden counter. One of those Draenei types slowly strode into the room. Unnerving, the lot of them - looked close enough to demons to unsettle him, and this one...

He tried to avoid his eyes. They glowed, to be sure, like all of them did - but the blue was...dark, forboding. It sucked the remaining vitality from the room as the creature turned his head this way and that, then stared down at the goblin, expressionless.

A question asked. The goblin answered it quickly, pointing a finger out the door in the general direction of the troll ruins, north of the ramshackle town.

The fall of coins on a counter, another crack of thunder seeming to follow the creature out the door and into the morning air.

Trembling, the goblin pocketed the gold, and shook his head, pondering the fate of the creature the Draenei was looking for, and wondering how much said creature had invested in the local bank, and how long it would take him before he could get his hands on it.

Hours later...

The beast strode through the forest, the expressionless face a deterrent to the inhabitants, causing both animal and troll to avoid it, ducking into the depths of the foliage and ruins as it passed. One lone gorilla chose not to get out of the way and received a mechanical blow to the head for its trouble, crushing its skull instantly. The beast, no, draenei, lifted the great hammer to his shoulder and continued on his way, leaving the corpse to rot in the midday sun.

And there, for an instant, he saw the shimmer of sunlight on pale flesh, darting among the leaves. The sky darkened with his eyes, rain beginning to fall in a quiet hush as he strode forward, purposefully, the pressure within roaring in his ears even as the sky broke, lightning flashing, he scented her, knew she was near...

He strode past the thick overgrown root, pausing mechanically, and turning to it. There. There was what he needed, what he craved, what would make the ache go away.

His eyes didn't register the terror reflected in hers as he tore through the thick brush to get to her.