Disclaimer: Do I really have to mark each new chapter with a disclaimer?

Mental link: ~I'm speaking to you from inside your brain! ~

Death Knights: "We speak like this, worm."

Liches:"We speak like this, mortal."

White Zetsu (Or Su.):"I talk like this too! YAY!"

Black Zetsu(Or Zet): "Shut the hell up Su. This is why nobody likes you."

Lich King:"Listen or die, Mortal."

Under New Banners: Book of the Scourge

Chapter Eleven: Loss of Innocence and The Heart of Darkness

Over the last few years, foolish people have been slowly coming to Northrend in order to answer the call of the Old Gods and willingly enslaving themselves to the cult of Twilight or whatever the hell they call themselves. People will understand what you're talking about if you just call them 'Twilight Cultists'.

Out of the many enemies that dare to stand against the Scourge, these Twilight Cultists are by far amongst the most dangerous. They have no morals that they live by, they have no limitations that they are willing to stick to and they don't fear death in the slightest!

Unlike with Paladins or almost any other champion of the Light or Nature, a truly devoted follower of the Old Gods cannot be raised into undeath properly. At death, the Old God that the cultist gives loyalty to will lay claim to their soul within moments after their deaths and drag it off to do whatever they do with souls. The Crypt Fiends suggest that the Old Gods consume the souls of their worshippers and their ritualistically sacrificed victims because they like the flavor.

Now how does this make them such a threat? Without a soul, raising a former Twilight Cultist into a proper member of the undead community becomes impossible. Even the seemingly mindless skeletons require just a tiny fraction of the soul of their former owner in order to have just enough of a mind to understand the orders they are given. Without a soul, one doesn't have a mind. Without a mind, one cannot comprehend a command. Undead raisin from the bodies of Twilight Cultists just sort of stand there mindlessly, not reacting to anything around them.

You can get a bit of use out of them if you raise them from the grave quickly enough after they die, but after a few minutes the Old Gods will take what they are owed and tear the soul from the undead body, turning it into nothing more than a mindless, lifeless husk.

While this disadvantage during a combat situation is a pain to deal with, the true danger comes from the higher prophets and priests of the cult. Those who prove themselves to the Old Gods are rewarded with powers that can quite frankly require teams of our best, brightest and strongest in order to have a chance at taking them out. More common results involve the puppet of the Old Gods retreating to cause problems another day or the whole team being wiped out with much pain and yelling.

The level of threat increases when the Faceless Ones, the abominations of the deeps that serve the Old Gods and act as the leaders and enforcers of the numerous branches of the Twilight Cult are present. These creatures show signs of being made from Saronite itself, thus enforcing just how hard it is to harm or kill these soul eaters from beyond the planes of standard existence.

Pockets of the Twilight cult can be found in the deep and dark places of Northrend, but all of them are still rather small. It is our duty, our pleasure and our very way of life that demands that we ensure that any and all pockets of these heathens that are discovered are crushed as swiftly and brutally as possible. The Lich King rules this world as its one true ruler and he WILL NOT share it with the false gods of the deeps!

~Chapter One of 'Twilight Cultists and why we have to crush their skulls into dust', judged by many Cult of the Damned members as the most left winged book ever written on the subject of Twilight Cultist extermination the Scourge has ever produced.~

...

Kill them all.

Kill the cultists. Kill their pet elementals. Kill their fucking ugly Faceless masters. Once they are all dead, burn the bodies. Once the bodies are burnt, have everything in the local area jump up and down on their bones until they are nothing but ashes and dust. Burn the ashes and the dust afterward then scatter what remains to as many different winds as possible. Only then can you move on to the next objective. Only then is the Master's hatred for the Old God puppets you've slaughtered in hatred and cold blood sated.

~ 'All you need to know about the Twilight Cult', the shortest and most right winged piece of writing dedicated to the termination of the Twilight Cult in Northrend ever written. According to the Bronze Dragonflight, it is the second shortest such piece of work dedicated to wiping out any other group ever produced. ~

...

Unnamed Nerubian Ruin / Alliance Deep Ore Sample Mine

As Naruto slowly made his descent through the mine that had been the cause of so much misery and insanity, he saw things that would have driven him to pants soiling terror and quite possibly insanity had he still been alive and naive. Not everyone had been driven to madness by the Saronite at the same rate as the rest. As his march into the heart of darkness continued, Naruto discovered the gristly fates of those who had failed to be driven to madness by the power of creatures that had once ruled the world fast enough.

The moment that would forever remain with him was about half way through. Prompted up against one of the mine walls was a rather tall, rather expensive looking dinning chair that had what appeared to be a rather beautiful woman dressed in what could only have been rich red silk clothing sitting cross-legged rather comfortably in it at first glance.

As he approached the first thing that hit him (after the sheer strangeness of the situation) was the smell. Once the horrible smell broke through, the rest of the illusion quickly followed. The woman wasn't sitting as comfortably as the first glance might have suggested. Her jaw had been dislocated at some point before her mouth had been sewn shut with clear signs of infection around the stiches. The woman's eyes, dry and heavily bloodshot green, had been sewn open as well forcing Naruto to witness the sheer unspeakable agony that the poor human woman was still currently in as her eyes tried to move to meet his, begging for freedom from her torment.

Noticing that something was wrong with her clothing, Naruto gently reached down and tried to tug at one of her shelves, meeting surprising resistance. Taking a closer look, his eyes widened as he found the silk garment sewn onto the flesh around her wrist. With a fairly strong tug, the infected string broke and the damp shelve lifted, reveling a sight and smell that would have made even the coldest of shinobi lose their lunch.

Everything that had been beneath the silken dress had been skinned, leaving the muscle exposed. In the middle of her wrist was a large, dirty metal nail which had been hammered through the very bone itself, pinning the limb to the chair. The whole limb was tainted by infection, maggots feasting on the meat the whole while. Now knowing what he was looking for, Naruto noticed signs of other such spikes in the woman's feet, shoulders and even through her knees in order to make her sit with them crossed underneath the silken garment.

Meeting the woman's eyes again, Naruto simply felt sad as he placed his hands on the woman's cheeks. "I'm so sorry you had to go through this." was all he said before in a moment of pure compassion he quickly and professionally snapped the woman's neck. While she didn't die right away, as he watched the life fade from her eyes the pain that had been her existence faded with it. The last thing Naruto saw in her eyes before they clouded over completely was a moment of pure bliss after being freed from her torment.

It was not the first mercy killing that Naruto had to perform in that tunnel. It wasn't the last either. It wasn't even the most painful or weird method of torturous death he witnessed in the tunnel by far. But it was the one that he would forever recall whenever he remembered the journey into the deeps of Northrend that day.

He didn't know how long he walked along that tunnel in the darkness, but at the end of the tunnel Naruto saw a weird, purple light. Approaching with caution but unafraid, Naruto stopped just at the entrance of what was a large chamber lit up but at least eight blazers, all of which were lit with purple flames. The walls of the chamber were barren rock, but in the center of the room was a somewhat large makeshift altar that had an idol of... something in the center of it. Just looking at it hurt Naruto's brain, but the very presence of it seemed to fill him with rage.

Looking at the parts of what appeared to be a twisted alter that didn't require him to stare at the idol in the center; Naruto noticed the piles of dead bodies. They were in different stages of decay and some of them were quite fresh, but it was clear that all of them had been killed at the end of some ritual. Just in front of the alter knelt what appeared to be a human being dressed in a strange set of armor. At one time it might have been so golden that just being near a source of light would have given the wearer a golden glow, but it had been tarnished by forces unknown so that instead of a golden color it gave the wearer a tainted purple-yellow aura instead.

As silent as the grave, the kneeling man rose to his feet, a large hammer hanging from his belt. "Naruto, you've come all this way only to stop at the threshold? To quote the ever quoted conversation between a spider and a fly, 'Come into my parlor.' "

Naruto blinked in surprise for a moment at the fact that not only did the man know he was there, but knew him by name as well. Still, he took a few steps out of the entrance tunnel and carefully observed his surroundings while keeping at least one eye on the man by the alter. The lightning may have lit up the place somewhat but what it mostly did was create new, deeper shadows in the room. "Who are you and just how do you know my name?"

"Once upon a time I was merely Andrew Jackson, loyal paladin of the Silver Hand and loyal champion of Stormwind City. When I look back on just how naive I had been during such days that happened a lifetime ago, I can't stop myself from laughing but since I still haven't earned my true name yet you can call me by that one. As to how I knew who you are..." Jackson turned in order to face Naruto, letting him see just who he was dealing with. "The master told me you were coming."

Once upon a time Jackson had been considered rather ruggedly handsome and a prize that any woman would have killed to be with. In between the recent lack of sunlight, the poor diet and countless self-inflicted injuries that was clearly no longer the case. Jackson's head was completely covered in scars and scar tissue to the point that trying to work out any of his other features or where one scar ended and another began was an invitation to go completely insane. The only thing other than scars that could be seen was his eyes. Once you looked into them, you knew you were no longer dealing with a human being. This thing was raw insanity driving a human body.

Jackson slowly smiled; a sight which didn't exactly make looking at him any easier. "So the Scourge decided to recruit its newest Death Knight from Konoha of all places? They could have done better, but then again they could have done far worse then you. It's almost a total shame that all their effort has to be ruined by your early death at my hands. Those souls you released before they were ready to be offered to the master were somewhat of a loss, but yours will be a fine replac..."

Cutting off the fallen paladin before he could finish his sentence two small, fast moving objects stuck him right in the forehead and passed through his skull with little trouble. Unceremoniously Jackson fall backward, smacking into the alter as Naruto lowered his hand, the skin around the tips of his index and middle fingers healing over as he did so. "Well, that was one way to shut you up."

Turning to leave, Naruto stopped the moment he heard someone chuckling. "You know it's quite rude to interrupt someone before they are finished speaking." Turning back to the alter, Naruto saw that Jackson was standing again, hammer in hand with two holes in his head. The holes in the man's head were healing before his very eyes. The dark little smirk that was smeared over face his face made Naruto hate the man even more. "Did you honestly believe that was going to work?"

"You know for a few moments there yeah, I kind of did." Naruto answered truthfully, drawing his own oversized weapon in preparation for what was about to come.

"Well, since it is clear that we're both here for the same reason I guess we can skip the pre-battle banter. Now then Naruto..." It took all of Naruto's experience as a Shinobi to move to the side as Jackson seemed to move in a blur of purple light. Where he had been standing, Jackson brought his hammer down, breaking much of the floor around where the strike had landed while Jackson himself gazed at him with murder in his eyes "COME HERE!"

...

The wreckage of Ami's home, Elemental Countries

It hadn't taken Hinata much to get a mission without a clear outcome that headed north set up for her. All she had needed to tell the Hokage was that she had a lead on the whereabouts of Naruto and that she didn't trust anyone else to check it out. The fact that this lead was strong enough to pull Hinata from the downward spiral she had been suffering for weeks only made getting the mission easier.

While she didn't know how much of Ami's story was factual or not, Hinata wasn't about to let this chance to make up at least some of her failures when it came to Naruto slip by without checking it out first. If it turned out that Ami was lying to her... if she still had the strength in her when she returned to Konoha she would beat the lying bitch to death.

Doing such a thing would have been impossible to imagine a year ago but with Naruto gone the world had become a dark, painful place and the sheer agony that getting her hopes up that she could not only find him but speak to him for a couple of minutes only to have them dashed...

Removing the loose stone in the cellar of the darkness covered ruin of what had once been a house that Ami had told her about, Hinata's eyes landed on the plain brown leather cover of the book she had been told would be there. Throwing caution to the wind, she reached in and removed it, opening it and scanning what few pages remained. It was easy to tell why Ami wouldn't wish to be discovered carrying such a book even if it seemed to lack the information that caused so much destruction and death over the Land of Fire's north. No doubt some of the missing pages did.

Rereading the page that held the ritual she wanted, Hinata considered what she would do with this information. It was quite possible that Ami was connected to whoever had caused the outbreak of the undead. By right she should go to the Hokage and report such a fact. But if this ritual didn't work then clearly it was a fake book and all Ami had seen when she claimed to have seen her sister was just a delusion of what she wanted to see with all her heart. But if it did work, she would see Naruto again...

"Let's cross that bridge when we come to it." Without another word, Hinata closed the book and vanished into the darkness of the night. She had to prepare.

...

Unnamed Nerubian Ruin / Alliance Deep Ore Sample Mine

Throwing his body to the side like a rag doll, Naruto managed to avoid the searing blast of light that would have seared flesh from bone, only to feel a metal boot slam into his ribs as his disparate dodge left just enough of an opening for such an attack to connect. Flying further then he had planned and skidding in order to avoid falling into one of the openings of colored flame, Naruto's eyes widened as he barely managed to step to the side and avoid one of his feet from being the last thing to go through his head as a large hammer descended past his hand and landed with a heavy thud on the side of the metal beacon, sending the purple flame that was happily burning within flying into the face of the being who had provoked it.

Naruto had expected a the man to start screaming in pain as the flames burned him, to start swatting at them in an attempt to put them out or just show some sign at all that the flame was hurting the man in the slightest damn it! But there was nothing. As the man turned to gaze at Naruto, the former shinobi of the hidden Leaf felt a very human chill go down his spine. While the former paladin hadn't made any movement or shown any hint that the flames were painful in the slightest, that didn't mean they weren't having any effect at all.

What skin, muscle and fat that had been left in the paladin's jaw and cheek area had already melted and dripped away, leaving behind a smile that was larger and creepier then any such grin had a right to be. As the flames consumed what was left of his head, the mad man's eyes refused to leave Naruto's own. The hatred and insanity that had been buried deep within their depths had been fused together in what could only be called utter zealotry bore holes into his very soul as the servant of the Old Gods eyes vanished behind a rolling wave of purple flame, melted skin, fat and muscle tissue. Within a matter of seconds, the…mass mixed together into a purple mess that consumed both fire and face with equal abandon before it slowly began to settle in a new, fleshy form.

There really wasn't many words that could be used to describe what he was seeing now and if pressed Naruto would freely admit that he was pretty certain he had made up at least a few of them on the spot in order to give himself something to work with. 'Sickeningly purple fleshy...thing with a trunk that hates you' was the official, censored way he would describe it to others. While it was a truly basic description of the creature that had only minutes ago been a Paladin who was completely batshit insane, it was honestly all that was there. It was purple and fleshly looking while being rather sickening to look at (skin crawling was not something to watch happen on a full stomach… or at all if it can be avoided) and where the fixed smile had once been was now a sort of trunk while a strange killing intent poured off of it.

And that somehow made the whole thing worse to Naruto. While the freak that had once been Andrew Jackson had truly been a soulless monster by the end it was at least possible to tell that he had at least once been a perfectly normal human who had lost his mind and soul to insanity. This thing was just too… alien.

It didn't show the same madness that had been present mere moments ago and other then the sheer, weird hatred that was just gushing from the foul thing like blood from an infected wound it seemed to lack any and all possible emotion. When the creature, a human hand still gripping the hammer that had tried to flatten Naruto before spoke, the death knight with bone colored spikey hair didn't understand the words themselves but their meanings drilled into his mind through his teeth painfully.

'YoU wILl Be A fInE fEaSt Of LoSt SoUlS, pUpPeT oF fAtE.'

Gritting his teeth in order to drown at the pain and his growing fury, Naruto brought his sword to bare, his eyes narrowing into cat like slits as he glared at the faceless abomination of nature that was now his sworn enemy. "I've never believed in fate and I don't plan to start now you ugly motherfucker!" He roared in hate filled defiance.

For a brief moment, Naruto wondered why he was so anger… so driven to perform his duty as an agent of the Scourge to wipe the creature in front of him off the face of the planet. In the end however he cast such queries aside when he came to the conclusion that it didn't truly matter why he hated it so much, this creature just needed to die.

'YoUr FaLsE bRaVaDo WiLl NoT sAvE yOu, PaWn Of KoNoHa.'

No more words were exchanged as both Death Knight and Faceless one charged the other with full intent of making their world a better place by wiping the other son of a bitch from the face of it.

…..

Eastern Headquarters, Location Unknown

"Sir, I don't mean to bother you but I've noticed that Lord Orochimaru's pet Uchiha isn't packing his stuff for the move. Is he staying behind?"

As Kabuto walked calmly through a poorly lit corridor that would have seemed like any of the other hundred or so such corridors designed to look the same to those who weren't meant to be here with Orochimaru's latest bottle of painkillers placed carefully on the tray he was carrying next to a filling if somewhat basic and bland meal, the snake sannin's second in command pondered the last coherent words of the latest spy in their ranks to be exposed by the wide scale move.

It was frighteningly easy to spot them due to the fact they were trying so hard to uncover just what Orochimaru's latest wide scale project truly was. There had also been a number of changes in the leadership of several bases, projects and security details where his lordship deemed that weakness, corruption or treason had led to far too many spies infiltrating their ranks.

Kabuto sighed a little to himself as he continued at his standard pace. The snake sannin had been quite busy organizing the movement of his forces despite his steadily failing health and disliked having to stop every now and then for such things as mealtimes and his medication. Even the best of positions had their downsides and Kabuto had long ago accepted that all things considered dealing with a boss who was a workaholic wasn't all that bad. However even he had to admit that he was interested in learning just what Orochimaru's true goal was.

The snake sannin was keeping the details of this latest scheme as close to his chest as possible, keeping everything on a need to know basis with the threat of painful, agonizing death hanging over those who sort to learn more than they needed to. Each different cell was given a very specific task to carry out that they were to keep secret to everyone else, each project leader overseeing the cells only knowing what those cells under them knew… even the base leaders who were in control of countless taskforces only held one piece of the puzzle.

Because of his position as second in command, Kabuto prided himself on being in a position that allowed him to get a much grander view of events in motion. He was able to connect most of the different puzzle pieces and even had a view corners already set up. However critical parts of the puzzle were still missing and he wasn't allowed to look at the box for guidance. Not yet anyway.

The sound of a pain filled scream up ahead broke Kabuto from his thoughts. Considering his workplace and quite often the nature of the work carried out within its stone walls hearing the odd scream of utter mind destroying anguish was merely the sign that someone was doing their job correctly under normal circumstances; Which made this scream even stranger due to the fact that all such projects had either been put on hold or terminated due to the move…

Picking up his pace Kabuto started to head towards the source of the sound. It wasn't too much of a bother for him… he had already been heading where he suspected the noise came from.

….

Unnamed Nerubian Ruin / Alliance Deep Ore Sample Mine

Slamming his sword into the ground with his right hand in order to stop his trip backwards while keeping him on his feet, Naruto breathed heavily as his left arm hung uselessly like the dead weight it currently was. The fast paced, highly deadly melee that had so far been the engagement with the… thing he was battling to a more permanent death had taken its toll with a number of small lashes that were healing at a slightly slower pace than he would have liked and a dislocated left shoulder, causing the rest of the limb to hang uselessly.

Naruto would have liked to say he was giving as good as he got, but that was open to debate. While it was true that he had landed a number of blows and strikes that would have either crippled or outright killed a living enemy of flesh and blood the faceless freak didn't even seem to notice such minor injuries to where Naruto had guessed its lungs, heart and other normally vital organs should have been. At an earlier stage he had managed to hack off the creature's still human looking right arm only to have it grow about three purple tentacles like things in its place.

He was in trouble. Naruto could admit that to himself. Despite his heavy breathing he wasn't tired; he had been doing it more out of a trained reflex his body had picked up over the many years of being alive but he was down an arm, limiting his abilities greatly since he couldn't use jutsu with the one hand that was holding onto his sword. Come to think of it, he couldn't use most of his magic either for the exact same reason. Given enough of an opening he would have been able to pop his shoulder back into place and regain the use of his left arm but with the narrowing of his unblinking glare at his opposition it didn't that a rocket scientist to work out that he wasn't going to get such an opening easily.

It was just staring at him with its freakish, blank and uncaring gaze. The thing didn't even make a stance like it was prepared for combat; it was just standing there whilst a strangely colored liquid that Naruto was assuming was the creature's blood oozed slowly out of the wounds he had inflicted earlier, not even caring that it had been hurt in any regard. That cold, cruel indifference to everything around it… Naruto loathed it. He despised it so much that it honestly scared him how quickly it could get under his skin with such little effort on its part.

The only warning that Naruto had that the small interlude was over was the slightest twitch of the former paladin's left knee. Feeling it coming more than being able to see it coming, Naruto ducked his head to avoid a clothesline that would have beheaded him had it connected. Learning from past mistake, an armored fist was already punching right were…

Crunch!

The noise and feel of human bone shattering under his strike had never felt as good to Naruto as it did in that moment. Foreseeing a counter attack, the death knight rolled to the aside and avoided a blow that could have easily embedded an armored human body into a layer of rock and dirt. In that moment Naruto finally saw his opening. The broken leg had caused the faceless prophet to shift far too much weight behind the strike without having the steady foundation to keep it from stumbling forwards. It was a quickly closing window of opportunity; Even as he watched Naruto could see the purple/bluish gunk that made up the creatures flesh and blood pump into the former human's legs, quickly trying to remove the flaw in its current design.

Spinning the overly large blade in his hand so that Naruto had a reverse grip on the handle the death knight performed a shift strike at knee height, severing the purplish legs from the rest of the former paladin's body at the knees in a spray on purple goo and a loud bellow of frustration as the faceless one crushed onto the ground. That caused Naruto to feel yet another spike of anger; the damn thing couldn't even feel pain or fear properly. How are you meant to enjoy kicking ass when the ass you are kicking doesn't seem to understand it is being kicked?!

Jumping back to a relatively safe distance before sticking his overly large blade into the rock that made up the ground with surprisingly little difficulty, Naruto took a deep breath out of reflex before grabbing his limp arm and forcefully pushing it back into place. The popping of bone returning to its rightful place in the world was rather painful, but the former shinobi had gone through worse injuries in life and death went a long way to mute the pain. It was like hearing sound while under water now; Distant, distorted and somewhat alien.

Sparing but a moment in order to wiggle the fingers of his recently repaired arm in order to ensure that everything was at least working at a satisfactory level, Naruto seized his blade again and pulled it out of the rock before turning his attention back to his fallen foe. Purple gunk still oozed from the stubs that had once been legs, but it was clear that it was slowly but steady replacing what had been lost. Naruto wasn't planning on giving it the time to do so.

Using chakra to further empower his legs, Naruto leaped towards the nearest wall in order to spring board himself high into the air of the chamber. Channeling wind chakra through the blade, the undead shinobi hurled his giant, now wind chakra enforced sword down towards his currently still legless prey. The faceless one tried to raise on of its arms to deflect or at least shield it from the attack, only to have the sword pass through the limb, severing it completely around where most humanoids had their forearms before passing through the unliving creature's torso, impaling it as the sword carried on till about all that was sticking out was the hilt.

Still making his own trip downwards, Naruto channeled his chakra into the palm of his right hand, forcing it into a familiar blue whirling orb of death as he pulled his arm back, ready to thrust it into the target he was fast approaching; the faceless one's head.

"RASENGAN!" He roared as he finally drove his arm forwards to spear his target.

…..

Elsewhere~

Kabuto didn't drop his tray as he saw the wreckage that had once been his master's doorway. That would have implied that he was A) worried about Orochimaru's welfare and B) been surprised by this turn of events. Instead, he rather calmly and professionally put the tray down before approaching the now open doorway with the upmost caution, weapons already close at hand.

Someone stepped through the door.

Kabuto hesitated. While he knew that Orochimaru was one of the greatest shinobi alive, he had seen what Sasuke could do and he had no trouble admitting that under the snake master training program Sasuke was on par if not greater than Orochimaru had been in his prime. It was the kind of fight that only a fool would bet money on the outcome of.

"Who…" Kabuto asked without asking, his eyes looking into the one remaining eye of Sasuke Uchiha for his answer.

….

Something was wrong.

Normally when he hit something with Rasengan, the target tended to either get blow away really injured or tried to stand their ground and get a hole drilled through them. Naruto felt a creeping sense of dread settle in the pit of his stomach as not only wasn't his rasengan turning this faceless freak's head into a pile of red and purple paste, but it was starting to chuckle in a spine tingling way as it started to push his rasengan back by raising its head off the ground!

I mAy HaVe OvErEsTiMaTeD tHe StReNgTh Of My UnFiNiShEd BoDy BuT yOu WiLl DiE hErE uNrEmEmBeReD aNd AlOnE bY mY hAnD, pUpPeT oF fAte.

Even as the pain from the latest words lingered in his mind like nails in a plank of wood, Naruto knew in his core this thing was right. He wasn't strong enough to win this fight. It was only a matter of time until the damn purple ooze rebuilt enough of this things body so that it could fight at its fullest again and every second another weakness of the human it had used as a base would disappear. Why bother fighting against something when you knew what the outcome was?

No.

Something snapped in Naruto's head. The prior despair that had been clouding his thoughts ignited in a burning funeral pyre of anger, hatred and loathing so strong that his body began to physically shake. He was angry at the very idea that fate would dare to try and interfere in his affairs, let alone try to decide the outcome of his fight with anyone!

His back started to burn but all that did was fuel the fire further. He felt complete and utter hated for the thing before him on a physical, mental and spiritual level and at its refusal to just roll over and die only furthered his desire to hunt down and exterminate it and all of its kind!

Unnoticed black lines started to slide across skin not covered by his armor, the burning sensation following were they went. Naruto didn't notice them nor would he have cared at the moment. The burning was filling him with fresh, utterly raw power and he wasn't about to question were it was coming from while it was helping him with his goal.

The fact that there had been a moment that weakness had gripped his mind at all… Naruto loathed the fact that it happened and as his hatred and anger burned it away he swore to himself to never let such a filthy rot as despair take root in his heart or mind ever again!

The light blue of his Rasengan started to slowly but increasingly darken, growing darker and darker as more of the raw power he was channeling was pushed into it causing it to become denser. The faceless one's earlier successes in pushing its head off the ground started to reverse as the color changed; slowly driving it back into the rock it had started out on. Unable to physically go any further once the things head had reached the ground, the now black swirling orb of chakra finally started to drill through wait lay in-between it and the stone floor slowly.

Purple ooze, blue ooze and the odd streak of red blood sprayed in a sprinkler of gore as the as yet unnamed Rasengan drilled further and further through the faceless one's skull, it's wielder completely ignoring what weak attempts at struggling his victim was making. The only thing that would have made it better for Naruto was if it was screaming, but alas one cannot have everything.

After who knows how long, Naruto's Rasengan was drilling into the floor. It was easy to tell because it was making quicker work of it then what it had been forcing itself through prior. The faceless one had stopped struggling, its head little more than a series of different colored stains sprayed all over the room. Some would have claimed it was dead but could something that didn't have a life to begin with have it taken from them?

His grim but very satisfying job done, Naruto stopped feeding the Rasengan chakra and let it blow itself out. Taking a series of deep breaths to collect himself a little, the burning sensation faded away as the lines he had failed to notice started to withdraw to a location somewhere on his back. With the raw power it had granted him vanishing, Naruto felt… spent. After having some much power flowing in him, anything less just made him feel drained.

Waiting a little for the bulk of the feeling to pass, Naruto forced himself onto shaky legs before reaching for the hilt of his sword. It took a solid effort and a least a couple of minutes to pull it out of both the ground and the corpse of the dead freak, but once it was free its wielder felt better for having it again.

Taking one last deep breath, Naruto turned from the scene and started to make his way out of this place of insanity and false gods. Maybe if he was lucky the fighting up above would still be going on. He really felt the need to cleave something in half right now.

A.N:

And here it is!

I am sorry this has taken so long, but between real life and just how hard it was to write this chapter in such a way that I was happy with it… I hope it was worth the wait.

The Faceless One was the thing that gave me the most trouble. Faceless Ones are generally not push overs since even the Scourge war machine has trouble dealing with them. Many will recall the Faceless one that was imprisoned in the Scourge's mines in Icecrown; I suspect they only imprisoned it because the Scourge present in the area lacked the means to actually kill the damn thing.

Just so we are all on the same page as to how I view Faceless Ones: I consider them the Old God's version of a titan golem made from flesh, the Old God's own power and whatever metals and stone are in the area they are making it. This would explain just why the Faceless in Northrend are generally stronger than the Faceless found in most parts of the Eastern Kingdom and Kalimdor.

An example of this is the Faceless in the Old Kingdom and the one on the Lost Isle (Those with goblins know what I'm speaking of). The Faceless One in the Lost Isle no doubt has the strongest metal and stone in the area in his body to help make them stronger, but the strongest metal in the area is copper (Maybe Tin. I doubt the Old Gods would care enough to smelt bronze) and thus can be taken down by a single goblin. The ones in the Old Kingdom however are infused with Saronite (As confirmed by Blizzard) and thus require a team of powerful heroes working together just to overcome one at a time. Distance from the Old God who created them and the general corruption of a place are also factors.

Anyway, I plan to go through old chapters and give them a bit of a clean-up in the coming week.

Reviews are highly welcome and I love you all for it.

Kiue Jin.