Dawn arrived at the town of Hearthglen, and the population began to wake up from their beds, ready to resume the cleanup from the aftermath of the attempted scourge invasion. Smoke rose from blacksmith chimneys, the workers making repairs to weapons and armour in case of a renewed assault. Hunters left the town in search of game, urgently needing food to tide people over until a new source of grain could be obtained that wasn’t tainted with the scourge plague. Movable barricades were being constructed, new towers were being built, and almost the entire town was mobilizing to rebuild and reinforce their home in case of a renewed assault from the monsters who had laid it under siege.

John awoke to the noise of all this new construction, his vision still slightly blurry from his sleep. He wasn’t sure how long he had stayed awake the previous night planning, but allowed himself to fall asleep the moment he felt tired again. With everything that was going on, he was going to take the rest while he could. Jaina was still asleep beside him, her head now resting on his chest and her hand snaking down to his waist. He felt a slight dampness where her mouth was, the powerful mage drooling slightly on him as she slept contentedly. It was cute.

John’s hand was resting on her hip, his index finger idly tracing circles on her soft skin, stirring some of his fragmented memories of her to the surface. They had a childhood friend relationship that had developed into something more, something that had taken them both by surprise. Neither had any illusions about finding true love, both had expected to be married to someone as a political bargaining tool. That was the normal thing for nobles of this world, marriage was used as a way to make or solidify alliances and to strengthen their house’s position. Despite that, these two had found each other, falling in love while maintaining a deep respect for each other’s positions. 

That made their current situation all the more depressing for him. 

He tried to extract himself from her embrace without waking her, but she doubled down, throwing her arm around his chest and shifting so she was half lying on top of him. He could feel a nipple brush his skin under the blanket, confirming that they were both mostly naked. Now that the sun had risen, he could see that their clothing was folded neatly on top of a nearby dresser, their weapons leaning beside it.

Giving up on letting her continue to rest, he shook her lightly and spoke softly, “Jaina. Jaina, wake up. I need to go see Uther.” 

“Mmm… nope. You are not getting away that easily. You have been promoted from crown prince to my pillow, so learn to live with it, because I am not letting you go again.” She said, no trace of sleep in her voice, apparently awake for some time and just enjoying their cuddling. 

“Jaina.” He said, raising his voice to a more normal volume since she was just pretending to be asleep. “You know if we don’t get out of bed soon, he is liable to break down that door to get in here.”

“He wouldn’t dare. Besides, I had cast a barrier on the room last night. He could break it, but even for him, it would take a fairly significant amount of effort to do so. So for now, we are free to cuddle and to talk without interruption. And maybe a few other things.” She playfully replied, tracing one of his nipples with her fingers.

“Can we at least get dressed first? After what I have to say, you might not want to be so close to me anymore.” John said. This was not going according to the plan he laid out in his mind last night.

“John, I love you and will support whatever it is. Unless you had committed some heinous atrocity by killing thousands of innocents, I have no idea why you would be worried that I wouldn’t want to be close to you anymore.” She said, then looked up at him. “Is it because of the Fel in your blood now? Antonidas said it should dissipate soon, as there wasn’t enough in your blood to taint you like the orcs.”

“No, not because of the Fel, at least most of it isn’t… Jaina, please. Let’s just get dressed. I told you my memories of us are fragmented, right? Well, there is more to it than that, and both you and Uther need to hear what I have to say before we continue any sort of relationship.” John pleaded with her. 

“Is it the strange relic you used yesterday? I thought it might have been something that Lordaeron had recently discovered and hidden away, ready in case of another demonic invasion.” She said, crawling directly on top of him now, pinning him to the bed. “John, you can tell me anything. You know that, right? Even if your memories of me are a bit jumbled from being hit on the head a few times, you should know we have always shared our most intimate secrets. Like, I know how much you like to suck on these.” She said, squeezing her breasts together with her arms and giving them a little shake. 

John was mesmerised by the generous orbs in front of him for a moment, her pink nipples dancing back and forth in front of him. He felt himself harden as she ground her vulva on his lap, the fabric of their underwear the only thing preventing him from sliding into her right then. He felt his resolve weakening, but with a heroic effort on his part, he did not fondle her or suck on the tempting protrusions. Instead, he decided to try a different tactic before this became more than it should be. 

“Fine, you want to play around? You asked for it!” He said, then reached up and began to tickle her just under her armpits and along her ribs.

“Eeeekk!!!” She screamed and fell backwards on to the bed, her breasts jiggling around.

He was tempted to grope her gorgeous orbs, but instead he followed her fall, pinning her hips with his knees, and continued his tickling assault. “Admit defeat, Lady Proudmoore. You have been beaten.”

“No! No! *Snort* No more! I surrender! *Snort* I surrender!” She squealed, already out of breath from his short, unexpected assault. Her laughter was cute, and she snorted several times, which was just adorable to him. He could see why the previous host fell in love with this woman.  

“Good. Now to claim my reward.” He said with a grin, looming over the blonde mage. He acted like he was about to kiss her, then ruffled her hair a bit instead. “Now, let’s get up and get dressed. We have a conversation to have with Uther, and an undead legion to deal with.”

“Fine, but you better promise me that we will continue this later. I missed being with you.” She said indignantly while crossing her arms under her breasts. That just pushed them out further on display, making them look even larger and more tempting.

Not likely. Depending on how this meeting goes, you will either want to keep your distance or, at the very least, need to report back to Dalaran on my visions of the future.

“Sure.” That’s all he said, giving her a rueful smile. That was the best he could accomplish with the weird mix of emotions he was feeling.

End R-18

They got dressed and went outside the keep in search of Lord Uther. According to one of the servants, the Paladin commander was at the northwestern gate, supervising the construction of the town’s new defences. As they began to head across the town square, Eh and a couple of the other footmen joined him, acting as John’s honour guard. 

They chatted a bit as they walked, Eh telling him about what had happened after he fell unconscious last night, which amounted to them dragging him to that room and going to bed themselves. Food was scarce right now, but he had sent the dwarves out to hunt first thing that morning, so he had high hopes of supplementing the town’s meager grain supply for the near term. Though as it wouldn’t take them long to overhunt the region, he suggested that they secure a line of supply sooner rather than later, else people may end up starving. 

Uther was where he was reported to be, watching over the construction of a pair of new towers while guarding the workers in case of an attack. After he gave John an enthusiastic greeting, almost dislocating John’s unarmoured shoulder in the process, they moved into the currently unmanned guard towers to have a private discussion. Eh, and his team guarded the entrance while they climbed up to the top, to the platform where archers would be stationed during an attack on the town. 

“Alright Lad, out with it! You have been giving me nothing but surprises for the last few weeks, from ditching your armour and plates, to flirting with a baroness, then coming in to save our lives with that incredible relic you found somewhere. I need some answers.” Uther said. There was no hostility in his tone, just confusion and maybe some hurt. 

John took a breath. “This might be difficult for you both to accept, but I am no longer the Prince you knew, you see…”

He began to explain that his memories had become fragmented, and that he had other memories now, memories from different worlds that were very different from Azeroth. Of how a God had shifted his mind into the body of the prince, that while he retained some of his memories, he was no longer that person. He explained that he still had feelings for people in this world, even though he wasn’t always sure why he had them. Like he still thought of Uther as a close Uncle, more so than as his commander, and how he could remember his love for Jaina, but it was like they were someone else’s memories of that love.

He talked about how his equipment was all gifts from this God, and some of the abilities he now had came from them as well. He cast several spells that seemed to operate differently than either the paladin’s holy magic or Jaina’s arcane magic, demonstrating that they functioned much differently than how this world’s magic worked.

He showed them his sword and described how its magic was powered by strong emotions rather than mana, a conceptually different form of magic than this world used. He talked about the Pelican, saying that besides the magic the god had imbued in it to shrink it, it only ran on incredibly advanced technology.  

He tried to keep close to the truth, without revealing that DEN exists, and that this world was just an entertainment show for those gods. He did not want a repeat of the last time he revealed the complete truth. He thought of using Jaina’s easy out of saying everything he was using was just relics that Lordaeron had squirrelled away, but that might have only bought some time until he was found out and questioned again.

He had thought of half a dozen different plans, but he couldn’t see any of them leading to an ending that would be satisfactory for his conscience other than this one.

I am not your prince anymore. Here is my proof.

Neither Uther nor Jaina interrupted him as he laid out his tale, the look on their faces going from incredulous to disbelief, finally settling on shock as he presented more and more evidence.

Finally, once he had finished that part of the story, he asked them a question. “Now, I have had these weird visions ever since I became infected by the Fel, visions I believe could be a possible future, though I have no proof. They came several times while I was unconscious, and I had another last night. Before I speak of them, do you have any questions regarding my tale?”

“Lad, if it weren’t for that ship of yours and that sword on your hip, I would think you had hit your head one too many times in the last few weeks. You have been acting strange since the day we met outside of Strahnbrad. That is the day this change began, wasn’t it?”

“Yes, I had awakened while waiting for the scouts to report in on the orc camp. At first, I had no memories of the prince, then they started to return a short while later. I still keep getting new information surfacing, like this morning, I recalled how lucky it was for the prince and Jaina to have found love in this world where nobles almost always have arranged marriages. If circumstances had been different, they would have been married already.” John replied, then realized that was a terrible example to give with Jaina present. She looked ready to cry.

Ah crap. Too late to take that back now.

Uther continued like he hadn’t just shoved his foot in his mouth. “Lad, what was it I told you the morning of your initiation into the Knights of the Silver Hand after you expressed your doubts that you were ready to join our order and stand with us in the Light?” 

John thought hard through his memory fragments, then almost as if summoned, the memory surfaced. “Lad, no one feels ready. No one feels he deserves it. And you know why? Because no one does. It’s grace, pure and simple. We are inherently unworthy, simply because we’re human, and all human beings–aye, and elves, and dwarves, and all the other races–are flawed. But the Light loves us anyway. It loves us for what we sometimes can rise to in rare moments. It loves us for what we can do to help others. And it loves us because we can help it share its message by striving daily to be worthy, even though we understand that we can’t ever truly become so. So stand there today, as I did, feeling that you can’t possibly deserve it or ever be worthy, and know that you’re in the same place every single paladin has ever stood.”

He blinked. He remembered that morning clearly now, like… like he had been there.

What the hell is this?

“Now, let’s go further back. As a boy, I taught you the ways of the Light. Who taught you the discipline of the blade?”

John had no clue. He didn’t-. Another memory resurfaced, and an image formed in his mind of an orange haired dwarf who was as quick to laugh as he was to scold. “Muradin Bronzebeard.”

How?

“Finally, who was it that you, while on your knees with tears in your eyes, begged me to resurrect even though too much time had already passed for me to do it?”

Begged him to resurrect? Can he resurrect people? Can a paladin resurrect someone?

John’s mind tumbled at the revelation. He had found a way to save Ash and Issei! He just had to figure out how to get there from here.

“Do you remember, Lad. They were very important to you, enough so that it brought a teenager to-“

“Invincible… my…horse. It was a riding accident in the winter, when it broke its forelegs. I didn’t have healing magic yet, and… I had to put it down by stabbing- Oh god, I can remember it clearly now… the feelings, the pain. I had raised that horse for nine years… It…it broke something in me that took a long time to heal from.” John said, falling to his knees, tears of anguish coming to his eyes. He felt like he just put down a pet he had for a decade who was injured in an unfortunate accident.

Oh god damn it… It feels almost like when my dog of fifteen years had passed away. Though this horse wasn’t my pet… was it?

He was no longer sure.

Uther placed a hand on his shoulder, offering him the small comfort of his touch. “John, I don’t know exactly what is going on with you, but I know you are still in there amidst these new memories you speak of. We don’t have the time now, but we will go and see Archbishop Benedictus once we do. Maybe he can commune with The Light to see why they provided you with both these new memories and those boons of yours. Until then, stay strong. We still need to go and investigate Stratholme. I am worried for the people there.”

John was too distraught to understand what Uther was saying right then, the memories of his horse’s death overwhelming him at that moment. 

Jaina, her own eyes full of tears and uncertainty, knelt beside John and embraced him. She wasn’t as sure as Uther was that her prince was still in this man’s head, but if he was, he needed her right then. If he wasn’t, well, this man had shown nothing but respect to her, rebuffing her advances when he could easily have taken advantage of her ignorance.

The least she could offer him was a simple hug.

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