I groan as I struggle to wake up. Which turns into a whine as much of my throbs in pain and discomfort.

'What happened?' I'm in a chair. Why am I in a chair? It's wooden, but with armrests and cushions. I don't own a chair like that.

I open my eyes to see what was:
Definitely not my house.
My childhood home.

Oh Shit my head feels like it's splitting in two.

What the hell was that? Ok think, what's the last thing I remember?

It was:
Going to bed for an early shift tomorrow.
Being attacked in my lab.

Argh again, shit, what was going on?

I stand from my chair, my body violently protesting but I force myself forward with panicked adrenaline. I'm in what has to be the living room of a fairly nice house. The wooden floor is in good condition, as was the impressive looking furniture. The only thing out of place was the layer of dust on everything.

What caught my attention, however, was the mirror and the burnt elf looking back at me.

The only thing passing through my head was:
'who the hell is that!?'
'That fire spell did more damage than I thought'

Argh again, dammit this didn't make any sense. Panic has truly settled in.

"I need to sit down", even my voice is wrong.

I freeze, spotting something, as I turn back to the chair. Any other time I wouldn't have cared it was there but, given everything that was happening, now it was the final piece of the puzzle I need to figure this out.

The golden mask of Avicebron.

"Well ... Shit" and then everything went black.

The human had always loved stories, many of his earliest memories involved a television or book.
History and lore were just another form of story and when something caught his interest he set about devouring as much information about it as he could get a hold of.

He'd taken pride in being able to win many arguments about his favourite worlds, using some obscure facts to completely derail their argument.

Fanfiction had been the logical next step. The "what ifs?" And "could have been" had drawn him in like a black hole. While see his favourite characters avoid tragic mistakes or create whole new ones was satisfying, it was crossovers that had captured his imagination.

Having the heroes and villains of one world react to something completely outside their understanding was a sight to behold.

Then one day he stumbled on a story about a troll with psychic powers and unmatched cube based building abilities, who used them to create a kingdom. A character made from a CYOA template.

A good read and when he reached the end he'd reached the end he'd looked the template over. When he reached the section on crossovers his mind swam with ideas.

It wasn't until a few days on a lunch break he'd put pen to paper and see if he could get the best of his ideas to work.

One might look at the leaders of Azeroth, past and future, and think that you needed be a personal pillar of strength or master of magic to rule a successful nation. That was wrong what you needed were loyal civilians and a powerful army.

When one thinks of Fate Servants they normally picture the Sabers and Berserkers, the powerhouses that could wipe out entire armies with a sneeze, that wasn't he'd had in mind. As fun as showing up, saying "I'm king now" and rolling from there sounded.

He'd wanted to build his on kingdom, he would build it in its entirety. The buildings, the army, the citizens. Bricks and mortar, golems, homunculi.

He'd brought Fate Servant without gaining too many negatives, with any luck starting during the First War should give him enough time to build an army that the Burning Legion, or their minions, wouldn't be able to afford to target him and most of his favourite characters were Horde leaders, so the alliance's opinion of him didn't matter much.

The choice of which Servant was a similarly easy task. Avicebron was only Servant he knew of that could build an army, many could summon or conjure one but that seemed like a dangerous gamble considering what existed beyond Azeroth.

Being one of his favourite characters didn't hurt either.

High elf was an easy decision for race, long life, affinity for magic and a way in with the Horde if the Sunwell was lost.

Selecting from the personality section wasn't just easy but also rewarding. Whoever had made the template must have been an overly kind person because many of more self-centred options gave points. Becoming ambitious and indifferent were necessary for the choices he'd have to make, almost giving him enough for a home and money. What good was the knowledge to create an army if you lacked the resources?

Taking traitor and stubborn, allowing him to gain the home and money he'd need, were risks he'd felt needed to be taken. There was a lot of time between the start of the First War and the end of the Third War, hopefully it wouldn't cause too much damage.

He'd almost finished there, focus back on his lunch and go back to work, but a stray thought had derailed his whole plan.

Avicebron knew nothing about homunculi.

He'd kicked himself. Avicebron's Wiki page had said over and over again that he knew next to no magecraft that wasn't almost exclusively related to golems.

He'd hastily gone back over the template to see what needed to be done to fix that mistake.

Fate Magus was critical, even if there was a Servant who could do the job better, the cost for another was too much.

It had cost him greatly, being the target of two dragon flights was no joke, but it could be worse.

One flight would already be crazy. Another had little more than two decades before their Aspect too went past the point of no return. The third would erase him the moment he came into existence or ignore him. Then there was the flight that rarely woke from the Dream. The final flight, while by no means pacifist, held life in high regard, so a peaceful resolution with them may be possible.

The fact that he hasn't chosen which flight was a problem all in itself, but it was worth it for the skills of possibly Fate's greatest living homunculus creator.

Jubstacheit von Einzbern, head of the Einzbern family.

With that he'd closed his phone, swallowed his burger and gone back to work.

I woke with a gasp, standing quickly as I took in my surroundings. Black above me, with countless spots of different coloured lights.

Laying face up across from me the human who had somehow caused this. Floating in a pool of swirling blue, black and gold, with white and red circling each other randomly throughout. I lean down to touch the pool I'm already ankle deep in.

My mind is assaulted with plans for golems, homunculi, the resources needed, how to set up a workshop to produce them at an alarming rate.

I yank my hand away from the liquid, breathing heavy. This was the golem master and the homunculus crafter.

This wasn't right, they weren't whole, pieces were missing. Where was the Noble Phantasm, or the Grail blueprints?

The template flashes through my head again and the answer, now that I had some context to what I was seeing, becomes apparent.

The human messed up properly adjusting his points, forgetting to remove the correct amount as he purchased Avicebron's power. This must have caused the gooey mess around them.

If that was the case then why is Jubstacheit also in such a pitiful, although more held together, state? Where was the problem wi-

"15 plus 7 is 22 not 23 you idiot!" I yell at the still unconscious form.

Deep breath. Now is not the time.

I need to fix this. There was so much knowledge here. Everything I had been working for, and more. The thought of it slipping way was horrifying beyond belief.

A sloshing sound draws my attention to the waking human. Excellent maybe he knows something about this and could come up with a solu-

As the human stands up a flash of blinding light erupts in my face and I see the path forward. Only the first step, but it's the first step on a path of greatness and power. Too stand at the table of those who will create the history of Azeroth.

So I stretch out, a mild tremor of fear and excitement as I wait for the human grasp it and our future.

The elf had always been odd, in the grand scheme of things. He'd grown up with his father in his home and workshop. The man had loved him greatly but with the nearest town two hours away by foot, he'd grown up isolated from other children.

His mother had passed from illness when he was no older than six, her trips to town three times a week were probably the only reason he wasn't a total failure in social situations.

He wasn't great by any means but he had a tendency to treat a conversation like a puzzle, and try to solve it as fast as possible.

Too this day he still didn't know what had killed her. She'd been fine the first day, feverish the second, bedridden the third, then gone the fourth.

So it had been up to his father to raise and teach him, unwilling to leave his family home and return to Quel'Thalas.

His grandmother had been one of the mages sent to teach the first humans magic during the Troll wars and had stayed in human lands both to teach more humans and to act as sort of magical advisor.

It was a family legend that she'd tricked her students into carving the road that led up the hill to, and then building, their home.

However as humans knowledge of magic grew so to do their need for her shrink. It was probably luck that old age took her life before a confrontation occurred. The home had been given to her youngest son, who had no interest in the politics of Silvermoon, only wanting a secluded place for his own research, taking his wife with him.

His childhood had been uneventful, day after day of study and assisting his father. His teenage years less so once he'd been allowed to travel to town on his own but ultimately of little importance. Save for when he'd discovered his calling.

With such a lack of social contact the elf had searched for other means of stimuli. His breath attempts at teleportation, a way for him to make his trips to town a daily occurrence, had ended almost as soon as they had begun. With no tomes beyond its mention in the house it was an impossible task.

His father was skilled in enchanting if there was an application of the skill it was documented somewhere in the house, so it was only a matter of time before he found something that wholly held his imagination.

Golems, the inanimate made animated. If he couldn't earn allies he would make them.

With this discovery he'd devoured every scrap of knowledge on the art of golem creation that lay within his home, both the written and any that his father would teach him.

By the age of seventeen he'd mastered anything even remotely related to golems for his limited library, so he was forced to seek knowledge outside of the safety of his home.

Dalaran held more knowledge than he'd known what to do with. Getting into the courses and lessons he'd wanted has been easy, he'd spent his whole life as his father's assistant. Only those nearing the end of their advanced classes could match his knowledge on enchanting, among the students at least.

He'd graduated in near record time and earned himself an apprenticeship with one of the most respected enchanters in the city. The years he spent working for him were used to refine his skills in golem crafting and writing paper after paper on ways to improve on current techniques, spending any money he had not used to keep him alive and healthy on supplies and renting equipment.

It was a decade of hard work before he was given a lab and budget of his own. No longer needing to scrape by for quality components aloud his research too make leaps and bounds, but it wasn't enough.

His golems were still sluggish and uncoordinated, at least by his standards, and every method or theory he used to try and overcome this limitation only lead to more dead ends. It was enough to drive a person mad.

He'd been saved by a group of recent graduates looking for aid in their own research. They had been attempting to prove that arcane magic could be used to heal others just as well as priests could with the light. A way to properly focus their magic while eliminating mortal error was needed to test their latest idea and had come to ask to use one of his device after they had been denied from their usual places of requisitions.

He'd agreed on the condition that he could watch their experiment, needing a distraction from another failure. The group had reluctantly agreed, while having someone observe their secrets was undesirable anyone else they could ask would demand a far higher price.

The experiment was a failure but watching as the cadaver they had burned many of their favours to get, spasm under their magic had been the enlightenment he'd needed. If the golems were failing to act in a mortal way then he would have to study mortals to find a solution.

So he'd studied until he could see body diagrams in his sleep, taking everything he now understood of the bodies of the mortal races to improve his work to new heights. Another decade on an entirely new field of study, but it had been worth it.

It was in this delirium of inspiration that certain similarities between what made up flesh and the necessary ingredients needed to make his golems. He'd dove deeper into this idea until a theory had emerged. He could grow golems.

He'd kept this work a secret, afraid that others would mistake what he was doing for necromancy, hiding his purchasing of the supplies he'd need within the funds he received for his golem work. Not a total lie it was just a different kind of golem then they were expecting.

The road had been a long one failure after failure and more than a few close calls with the city guard while disposing of them but eventually he managed a success. A horribly misshapen blob of flesh but it was moving and resembled the human he'd taken samples form, if you squinted and held you head to the side.

The experiment continued, each new creation looking more human than the last, until an amazing discovery, one of the flesh golems was producing magic. It had dawned on him then that he was no longer making golems but something else entirety nonetheless that had not stopped him from going further in his pursuit of golem crafting techniques.

More intense study of the magical flesh golem showed some of its nerves had bloated and were allowing magic to flow through them. An idea formed in his head, if he could use these magical veins in his golem, allowing the magic to flow contend with certain routes, they could make them immune to anti-magic spell, perhaps even anti-magic fields.

That's when he'd been found out. Just as he'd finished laying the nerves into his latest prototype, the remains of the flesh golem still warm on the table next to him, Dalaran's anti-mage guards had broken down his door. Unsure who it was from his lab at the back of his house on the second floor, he'd assumed the worse and activated the unstable golem and quickly gathered up his more important tools and research.

When the guards had revealed themselves he'd been relieved for a moment before they began yelling for his surrender and charging him with murder. Shocked by the allegation he'd too slow to stop one of the guards for attempting to deactivate the golem.

It had been pandemonium from there. The golem attacked, feeling the anti-magic spell wash over it as an enemy action, before he could yell the deactivation command a wave of fire was launched from the guard captain.

By the time he'd recovered from the pain the flames had caused it was too late to stop the coming series of events. The golem, having no real protection, was in the beginning stages of an overload, speed along by the guards continuing to assault it with a number of different spells.

Desperate to escape the inevitable explosion he dashed for the emergency exit. He slammed the door behind him and jumped from the small balcony to the alleyway below, clutching his life's work like a scared parents would their child.

The explosion had gone off before he hit the ground, if anyone had tried to run around the golem after him they were probably dead. Wasting no time he ran for the nearest teleportation hub and before anyone could ask had aligned the device to send him to the only place his panicked mind could think of. Home.

So with a quick tampering of the device in order to make it harder to track him he stepped through the portal unsure what lay ahead.

I catapult myself into a sitting position as I regain consciousness.

What the fu-.

I cut myself off as I take on my surroundings. A starry sky, a pool of swirling colours and a familiar, if worried looking, elf.

No no no nononono. This can't be real, shit like this doesn't happen, it can't happen. Those other world stories are all bullshit, magic fairy tale bullshit.

I fall forward onto all fours as I try and regain my sense of balance enough to stand.

I wouldn't be able to survive on Azeroth, not long term anyway. As soon as the third war started the whole planet was in a constant state of war, and that wasn't even considering the cosmic horrors out there. For christ's sake a giant space demon god stabbed the planet, what hell was I supposed to do with that information.

I get my feet under me and start to stand. Whatever this goo is it has the consistency of melting ice cream, not a liquid but too runny for it to be solid.

Seriously what the fu-. My brain stops as a light flares in my face and I see ... something. A vision? Helpful advice? Either way what I see scares me.

The elf's hand extends quickly, there's a slight tremor in his hand but, its clear that he's already made up his mind.

I stand frozen for what might have been hours, I knew what I had to do next but that didn't make it any easier. I'd be able survive, thrive even, but I wouldn't be me anymore, not as I was now anyway.

My hand slowly raises to meet the elf's, shaking like a leaf. I don't want to do this, I'd rather just go back home to bed, but I don't really see that as an option. I just hope this works.

I grab the elf's hand and we melt into the pool beneath us.

On the floor of my home my eyes snap open, mind spinning with plans for the future.