Stormwind Wizard God-Chapter 610: NEEERZZZZZZZZZZUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLL!

"NER'ZHUL!"

The voice dripped with scorn and malicious glee, cutting through the darkness like a rusty blade to wake up the orcs' most powerful warlock and supreme chieftain of the Horde.

"AHHHHHHH!" The instant consciousness slammed back into him, Ner'zhul let out a shriek that would make a banshee jealous—high-pitched, ear-splitting, and about as dignified as a pig in a mud wrestling contest.

Naturally, his voice was rougher than sandpaper on a chalkboard.

At the same time, every fiber of his being felt completely and utterly screwed—like his entire body was doing the backstroke through an ocean of pure nothingness, floating in a cosmic soup of "what the hell is happening to me?"

Ner'zhul squeezed his eyes shut tighter than a miser's purse strings, praying to any god who'd listen that this nightmare would just pack up and leave.

Fat chance of that happening.

It felt like the howling winds of his own personal hell were sandblasting his consciousness raw. In that maddening, mind-numbing drone that could drive a saint to murder, he heard that voice again—the one that made his skin crawl like a nest of spiders.

"NER'ZHUL!"

He cracked his eyes open and looked around like a startled deer. In the twisted carnival of light and shadow swirling nearby, he spotted the source of his current predicament—the son of a bitch who'd dragged him into this cosmic timeout.

"NER'ZHUL!" His name echoed through the void again, bouncing off invisible walls like a rubber ball from hell.

Ner'zhul felt a shadow darker than his worst nightmares creeping over him like spilled ink. He looked up and nearly pissed himself at what he saw staring back.

It was a colossal bastard wrapped in blood-red armor that looked like it had been forged in the fires of damnation itself.

This creature shared some features with the Draenei that Ner'zhul had cheerfully ordered massacred, but his face was redder than a lobster's ass. Two stubby curved horns sprouted from his temples like devil's handlebars, a goatee dangled from his chin, and two tentacles wiggled beneath his mouth like pissed-off earthworms. Several earrings glittered like stars, and his eyes burned with a yellow glow that could melt steel.

Thanks to their soul-deep connection—lucky him—Ner'zhul instantly knew exactly who this charming individual was.

Oh yes, that would be Kil'jaeden, the smooth-talking demon who'd suckered his soul into eternal servitude through a blood pact. Technically speaking, this was his boss for the rest of eternity and beyond.

"My lord!" Ner'zhul wheezed like a punctured bagpipe, and despite being trussed up like a Christmas turkey, he tried his damnedest to grovel properly.

"Ah! Ner'zhul, my less-than-stellar servant," Kil'jaeden, supreme commander of the Burning Legion's nightmare brigade, replied with a grin that could curdle milk. "Did you think I'd just sweep you under the rug and forget about you?"

"No, my lord, absolutely not!" In reality, Ner'zhul would've given his left tusk for Kil'jaeden to treat him like yesterday's garbage and forget he ever existed.

Too bad, so sad—that train has left the station!

"You worthless sack of disappointment! You ignored my crystal-clear orders and abandoned your mission to lead the orcs against Azeroth. You couldn't even manage to smuggle a simple bomb into Karazhan without crashing and burning! If it weren't for your yellow-bellied summoning ritual going tits-up, Azeroth would be one annoying dragon guardian shorter right now. You've let me down, cost me a fortune in resources, and frankly, you make me sick. You getting the picture here?" The demon commander's laughter was colder than a witch's tit and twice as unpleasant.

"No, master, I can make this right! Give me another shot!" Ner'zhul scrambled to backpedal faster than a politician caught in a lie.

"Nope! I'm fresh out of patience, and you're fresh out of chances. Time to pay the piper, you miserable excuse for a warlock!"

"No, no, NO!" Ner'zhul's screams ricocheted through the void like pinballs in a cosmic arcade machine.

Chunks of flesh were ripped from Ner'zhul's body like a kid pulling wings off flies, while the souls of the damned swarmed around him like angry hornets, clawing at his spirit with their ghostly talons. Blood and gore splattered everywhere, floating in the void like some twisted abstract art installation.

The next heartbeat, every shred of flesh snapped back into place like a rubber band, making him whole again—only to be torn apart once more in an endless, soul-crushing cycle that made Groundhog Day look like a vacation.

Throughout this delightful torture session, Kil'jaeden's laughter kept echoing like a hyena having the time of its life, his massive demonic frame shaking with mirth. That bone-chilling, sanity-scraping cackle was enough to make Ner'zhul's soul curl up in a corner and whimper like a kicked puppy.

And this... this was just the opening act of his eternal nightmare variety show.

Back in Karazhan, Duke let out a sigh that could've deflated a balloon.

He knew as sure as shit stinks that Ner'zhul would fold like a house of cards and become Kil'jaeden's personal plaything, just like history had written it. And it wouldn't be long before Kil'jaeden got bored with his new toy and would dangle one last carrot in front of Ner'zhul's broken, tortured soul—serve the Burning Legion one more time, or enjoy an eternity of getting his ass handed to him on a silver platter.

The spineless Ner'zhul would cave faster than a cardboard box in a hurricane.

His soul would be stuffed into a carefully carved block of ice harder than diamond, harvested from the ass-end of the Twisting Nether.

And boom—the first Lich King would be born, courtesy of cosmic peer pressure.

But Duke couldn't do jack shit about that particular clusterfuck at the moment.

He had bigger fish to fry and more fires to put out than a one-legged cat in a sandbox.

A third of Karazhan looked like it had gone ten rounds with a wrecking ball, and the area around the Overlord's Terrace was more destroyed than a trailer park after a tornado. Hell, even the surrounding stairs had gotten the business end of the explosion. They weren't just damaged—they were straight-up gone, baby, gone.

The entire Karazhan Mage Tower was decorated with cracks bigger than the Grand Canyon, looking like it had been used as a punching bag by an angry giant.

Actually, this was worse than any earthquake Mother Nature could throw at them.

Because earthquakes don't usually collapse the space highway that connects your magical tower to the rest of civilization.

Now they were stuck between a rock and a hard place with no way home, and their fancy space defenses had crumbled like stale cookies.

To make matters worse, void creatures were pouring out of the space cracks like ants from a kicked anthill, launching a two-pronged assault on Karazhan's main entrance and the library door simultaneously.

"JACKPOT! An abandoned wizard's tower! Kill the guards! Take everything that isn't nailed down!" Countless humanoid creatures wrapped in bandages like discount mummies, with cores made of swirling mysterious energy that glowed like disco balls from hell, came flooding into Karazhan like bargain hunters on Black Friday.

These lanky sons of bitches, standing taller than a basketball player on stilts, were called Ethereals.

They were basically cosmic pickpockets—a gang of interdimensional thieves who cruised the void looking for anything valuable enough to steal, trade, or fence.

"Kill these trespassing bastards!" Tirion spurred his noble warhorse forward like a knight from a fairy tale, leading the charge with his hammer raised high and ready to introduce some skulls to the business end of justice.

Gavinrad rode beside him like a loyal wingman, and behind them charged hundreds of heroic warriors whose translucent bodies glowed with righteous fury.

Khadgar floated through the air like a magical fighter jet, hurling fire magic that would make a dragon jealous. The massive fireballs he launched hit those greedy treasure hunters and exploded into fireworks displays that would've made the Fourth of July weep with envy.

At the main gate, Alexstrasza stood guard like a one-woman army, holding the line with the determination of a mother protecting her cubs.

Her ethereal dragon wings spread wide, and when some unlucky void monster tried to rush past her, she backhanded it so hard it screamed like a little girl and went flying backward nearly a thousand meters before it managed to stop tumbling through space. But the poor bastard quickly discovered that mysterious flames were spreading across its body like wildfire, burning even in the airless void.

It flapped its wings frantically, trying to put out the fire like a moth that had gotten too close to a bug zapper, but ended up barbecuing itself in front of its buddies like the world's most expensive barbecue.

It took two solid hours of ass-kicking to clear out no fewer than five waves of would-be raiders. The smarter void creatures finally figured out that this weird, mysterious building that had suddenly appeared in their neighborhood wasn't some easy target they could roll over like a tourist with too much cash. They tucked their tails between their legs and either beat feet or watched from a safe distance like rubberneckers at a car wreck.

Everyone regrouped at the top of the Mage Tower, gathering around Duke like moths to a flame.

"What in the tarnation just happened?" Tirion asked, still catching his breath.

"We're royally screwed. Thanks to that space explosion, Karazhan got kicked out of Azeroth like a drunk getting tossed from a bar." Duke rubbed his temples like he was trying to massage away the mother of all headaches.

"Well, ain't that just peachy." Everyone's faces went darker than a thundercloud on a bad day.