Fandom: World of Warcraft
Pairing: Khadgar & Male Orc OC [Platonic. Romantic if you squint really hard.]
Rating: Teen
Content: Graphic depictions of violence, Loss of limbs, Humour, Really awful puns
Date written: 19th July 2023
Summary: Deathlord Grokkar and his battalion of Death Knights are forced to retreat from battle after they are ambushed by demons on the Broken Shore. Khadgar rescues them in the nick of time, teleporting them to safety.

Grokkar, of course, has to suffer the Archmage’s puns as a result.

Author's notes: Not my best writing and it's kinda short, but I wrote this in one sitting and honestly I just wanted to write a bunch of stupid puns lmfao

They were very close to being surrounded.

The demons on the Broken Shore were relentless. If you killed one, two more would pop up in the defeated demon’s place. You would become more tired as the fight went on, and the new demons that were summoned would seem to be overflowing with energy and the need to kill. It was taxing, hard work, attempting to make any progress in taking down the Legion, or making a dent in any of their numbers. And all the champions of Azeroth did what they could to push the Legion back, asking for very little- or nothing at all- in return.

It was soul-crushing, at times. But Grokkar knew soul-crushing very, very well, and if there was anyone on Azeroth more relentless than the Legion, then it was him. Maybe his soul could become tired, but his body could not, so he and his Death Knights fought without mercy every single day.

Today, they were unlucky.

The demons seemed to have caught wind of their plan to ambush one of their encampments, and had instead ambushed them, and they were now fighting for their survival, slashing and hacking at the demons limbs and necks, using whatever abilities they could so they could at least return to Deliverance Point with their bodies mostly intact.

It seemed to be a mission doomed to fail, however. More demons were rushing toward them from over the hill, and they were suddenly trapped. There was nowhere to go. Grokkar’s Knights did their best to push the demons back, and the Deathlord himself managed to take at least twelve of the foul creatures down in one go (if he could even call them creatures, that is), but it still wasn’t enough. There were just far too many of them.

Before Grokkar could even give out the order to open a portal back to Ebon Hold and retreat, a large, extremely close fel-explosion blasted out his eardrums to the right of him, and all he saw before the darkness consumed him was a bright, green light.

He awoke to ringing in his ear. Yelling. Shouting. The sounds of battle. The cries of demons as they fell. He could barely see or feel anything, besides that. His vision was far too blurry and mind far too foggy for him to be of any use, besides perhaps as demon bait. The ground below him was rumbling. Somebody was dragging him across the ground, and Grokkar’s mind just barely managed to wonder if he was being dragged away by a demon, or one of his Death Knights.

“-ome on! We need to get the Deathlord out of here, before we’re-”

The faint sound of one of his Knights speaking to another answered his question, at the very least. But it didn’t sound good.

Another, lighter sound. Some blue-ish purple lights from...above? Was he laying on his back, or on his front? He couldn’t tell. All he could tell was the he was being dragged again, there was more yelling, and he could hear another, more distinct voice.

“Quickly, everyone into the circle, now! I’ll get us out of here!”

Khadgar.

His vision went blank once more.

Khadgar knew that the Deathlord was perfectly capable of taking care himself in most instances. He was a very skilled fighter, he was a terrifying Death Knight with amazing power, and most importantly, he was a very big orc with a very big sword.

He knew, of course, that going up against demons wasn’t hard for him. Going up against a lot of demons, in fact, seemed to be rather enjoyable for him, which was of no surprise to anyone.

But none of that information stopped Khadgar from being a bit of a...well...overbearing Archmage? He wasn’t sure what to call it, but he knew that his way of keeping in contact with the Champions of Azeroth could be...strange and unorthodox at times.

(The orb with his own head inside of it was something he was still made fun of for to this very day. He personally found it to be both very amusing and also quite practical, given the circumstances).

He’d found that over the years, keeping an eye on the Champions that helped him (and that he in turn helped) had often been a blessing, at times. Being able to quickly teleport a severely injured hero to safety before their untimely demise had only given him more reason to continue keeping his eye on the Champions of Azeroth, no matter in what strange way he did it.

It was something he was very thankful for, right now, as he teleported all of Grokkar’s Death Knights to the safety of Deliverance Point, where a few healers were waiting on standby.

He let out a sigh of relief once they were all accounted for and alive.

Well. Maybe not “alive” in the usual sense, but definitely moving and speaking.

His eyes fell onto Grokkar’s unmoving form, and he furrowed his brow in concern.

“Will he be alright?” He asked one of the Knights that was checking Grokkar’s health.

“The Deathlord will survive.” The Knight responded.

Khadgar closed his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief, but quickly opened his eyes again when he heard Grokkar start to rise from unconsciousness.

When he awoke from unconsciousness the second time, things were a lot quieter. It took some time for Grokkar to properly open up his eyes, but when he did, he was able to see much more clearly. It didn’t seem as though there were any demons around them either, and he was able to relax his muscles slightly.

Only a little, though.

Grokkar finally came to his senses in full, when he saw Khadgar leaning over him, looking to see if he was okay. He grimaced when he saw the state of Grokkar’s arm.

“Goodness...that doesn’t look good..”

Grokkar groaned and looked over at his right arm, only to find...that it wasn’t there. It looked to have been severed right at the elbow, a dark patch of ash and slightly burnt armour sitting in its place.

“Damn...that blast of fel energy...it must have taken off my arm..”

Khadgar shook his head in sympathy. “Deeply upsetting...but..at least you are alive. Uh..well...undead?” Khadgar smiled apologetically. Grokkar huffed in slight amusement.

“Yes...at least.”

He grunted as he attempted to get up off the ground, finding that other parts of his body were also injured, and in differing amounts of pain. He fell back down on the ground, the demon-corrupted earth flat at his back. He sighed in exasperation.

“Need a hand?” Khadgar asked in that tone of voice that implied he was telling a joke, reaching out a hand to help Grokkar up. Except it wasn’t Khadgar’s hand. It was Grokkar’s severed arm, his hand posed as if to reach out to him.

Grokkar couldn’t help himself. After all of the bullshit he had just experienced, now was the very last moment that he would ever expect Khadgar to make such a stupid joke. He burst out laughing, clutching his own chest as if in pain, doubling in on himself as he did so.

Grokkar kept laughing. For quite a few minutes, actually. Khadgar had eventually started laughing too, if only because he’d never seen the Orc laugh this hard before, and his laughing had started to become contagious.

Eventually, though, their laughing died down, and Khadgar was left wiping tears from his eyes. Grokkar looked like he was in extreme pain in an effort to not laugh again.

“I hope you realise that you’re never going to be able to make me laugh like that again.” Grokkar eventually said, after a moment of silence (and some quiet chuckling).

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I’ve got plenty more tricks up my sleeve. Well, actually, your sleeve, that is.” He said, pulling out a copper piece from within the exposed fleshy parts of Grokkar’s severed arm.

“Oh for the love of..” Grokkar trailed off, smiling reluctantly and chuckling a bit more as he covered his face with his one remaining hand in the hopes of blocking out whatever other terrible jokes Khadgar had.

“You know, Deathlord, if you had’ve told me you enjoyed horrifically morbid jokes sooner, perhaps I wouldn’t have had to spend so much time coming up with jokes that didn’t land.” Khadgar said, only somewhat accusingly. He was still grinning ear to ear.

Grokkar gave another amused huff. “I thought my sense of humour was obvious.”

“I thought you didn’t have a sense of humour at all. Until you start laughing up a storm, of course.”

“Contrary to popular belief, Archmage, I do find your jokes to be amusing. It just takes quite a lot to actually make me laugh, is all.”

“Well...I’m glad I know now.”

They both remained there in silence for a little bit, before Grokkar spoke up again.

“I do still need help getting up.”

“Oh right! Of course.”

Khadgar grabbed Grokkar by the shoulder pads, and hauled him up into a sitting position with great effort, the Orc helping with his one remaining arm, despite the pain it caused him.

“I’m glad you saved my arm. Saves me from going back down there and trying to scour the battlefield for it. It will help the reattachment process go by faster.” Grokkar said.

Khadgar grinned some more. “Oh, well that’s marvellous news! I was worried for a second that you’d be unarmed permanently!”

Grokkar hid his head in his knees and tried desperately to not laugh again. His shoulders were clearly shaking, though. “Khadgar...stop..”

Khadgar started to laugh once more, and seemed emboldened by Grokkar’s reaction.

“Oh, I’ll stop once you finally get me those two thousand nethershards, which as we both know is going to take a while. You know what they say about the price of nethershards these days...it can cost you an arm and a leg.”

Grokkar laid back down on the ground, got into the fetal position, and groaned.

End notes: Would you believe me if I told you I came up with all of these jokes by myself. I’m very hilarious when I want to be LMAO

Also if I had an Australian 20 cent piece for each time I wrote a fic in which someone lost a body part of theirs, I would have 40 cents. Which is not a lot of money, but it’s weird that it happened twice.