NOVEL NEXT A Rough Night
6/13 midnight
Gadgetzan was rubble before the fighting was over. Between dragons fighting Kaiju battles with blood gods, a rain of exploding stars, routine deployment of potions with extreme explosive power, an army of stone demons bursting with fel fire, and the late game addition of the Hydra Loa Gahz’rilla from Zul’Farrak, Gadgetzan was in a pretty bad place. Goblin technology considered the possibility of an explosion to be an exciting extra feature instead of a bug to be avoided, so as the fires spread the many, many devices throughout the city further accelerated the flames with blasts of superheated shrapnel. There were literally no fully intact buildings.
To make things worse, I probably needed to do something like this again tomorrow. If Hakkar was here, with or without an extra set of tits, that meant Zul’Gurub was probably compromised. Hakkar had put in a distressingly good showing, fighting off multiple dragon aspects, and if I remembered correctly the Loa gained power from their worshippers. Once my forces were in a better state I’d be sending an assault team to cut off his… er… her power source.
Uldir would have to wait. I still had people looking into it, obviously, but I hadn’t technically seen anything immediately dangerous yet. It’s still first priority the moment that I don’t have any more immediately verifiable leads, but just busting in could cause so many problems and containment breaches and I didn’t have the manpower needed to lock that place down while also invading Zul’Gurub. Instead I sent a single Fist and a few drones to build a bunch of Nerubian towers around the main entrances to make sure nothing could get in or out. That would need to do for a day or so.
I scanned through Talaada’s reports for the alternate timeline with a strained smile; things were progressing well there, at least. I left the list of loot for tomorrow, and signed off on Soridormi assisting in the capture of Azshara. They would have almost a week to catch her, so if I was lucky I might wake up with an ancient sorcerer queen and a regional upgrade for Soridormi.
The last thing I did was pick through the list of regional upgrades for Kerrigan.
Strength: You. Enhanced. Improved- instead of Power Swap, training an individual as a unit will grant them additional abilities as template stacking instead. However, any given individual may only be trained by a building once (unless they somehow lose their abilities).
Dexterity: Ghost Academy: all spirit members of the retinue will gain the ability to freely shift in and out of a physical state with a few seconds of focus.
Stamina: Burrowed Away: Should Kerrigan be killed, she will instead vanish and reform in the nearest base or company owned space available. The reformation process takes about an hour.
Intellect: Dark Portal - Gain access to a Demonic tech tree, emulating the Co-op tech tree used by Kerrigan in SC2.
Spirit: Demonic Pact - You may train non-members of your retinue with your buildings if you convince or force them to agree to it. This will instantly capture them.
I saw a list of 5 options that were all pretty good to be honest, and just picked the one that seemed the least redundant. She was already immortal as a demon, I already had two tech trees, I already had the ability to capture basically anyone in around an hour, and I was planning on passing out hollow overlords for my ghosts during their off hours. Turning literally everyone in my entire retinue into units without meaningful tradeoffs seemed like it would result in a nice little power bump all around. I had credits to spend, as the ship repair mission was completed, but honestly I didn’t want to risk fucking it up while I was this wiped out.
I wasn’t in the mood for anything fancy and Lividia was dead at the moment, so I called in Darcell. She was pretty, warm, affectionate, and had been with me since the start of this whole thing. I just didn’t want to sleep alone after a day like that. Stress defense was earning its keep; it disturbs me that anyone is hard enough to destroy a city full of innocent victims and go to work the next day without it.
••••••••••
Nefaria breathed heavily as she settled into her chair. She knew she had been Nefarian an hour ago. She knew she should be bothered by that, but how could she be upset about something as trivial as her gender identity when she’d been so soundly defeated? In such an exciting way, too. She couldn’t get Netorarian’s creamy powder blue skin out of her mind.
She had been planning on killing him if at all possible, but it seemed unlikely that she could manage it. Not only had she failed when in an ideal situation, she didn’t particularly want to lose that vision of beauty. Nefaria had never been in love before, she doubted she was now, but there was still something very enticing about Netorarian. Nefaria had precious few people she respected, most of which were direct family. She couldn’t help but respect and desire an enemy that had defeated her soundly, not once, but twice.
She wasn’t going to hand herself over to him of course, not by any means, but she did want him. On her own terms, and to the newly transformed dragoness that meant as a female elf between her thighs. The thought of being penetrated by his cock aroused and disgusted her in equal measures, and she was able to firmly lock away the arousal as a separate mental construct. It was new, and therefore aberrant.
Netorarian had proven more than her equal in open warfare. G’huun might address that, and she had a few plans involving Hakkar that seemed worth trying, but smashing herself into the enemy didn’t seem like it would ever be a winning strategy. She needed an alternative strategy, and her enemy had given her an excellent idea. One which would also solve her little problem with her retinue, help her grow stronger, and keep her far away from the enemy until her flawless escape ability recharged. She went into her app and purchased the Don’t Stand So Close to Me lure. There weren’t many beings that could teach her about magic, and none that were on good terms with her at the moment. She would need to be clever.
The enemy was patrolling the gates of Uldir, cutting her off from her servants in there, but thankfully Nefaria still had many of her servants. She went into the side lab and called for all of his surviving combatants to assemble. Kazakus, Chromaggus, Ebonroc, Flamegor, Firemaw, and Human Paladin arrived and knelt before their mistress, along with a strange red skinned troll. “Come. We must kill a frog.”
Kazakus spoke up, sounding strangely defeated. “Brother. They did something to us. When de Paladin revived us something didn’t come back. I'm weak, weak as a mortal, and so are Hakkar and Flamegor.”
The red troll stepped forward. “I’ll still serve you any way I can, master!” Her eyes glowed with zeal, but she lacked the aura of power she once had. It took Nefaria several seconds to reconcile this worm with the goddess that fought the aspects to a standstill a few hours ago.
“He’s managed to take my strongest pieces from me…” Nefaria whispered, her voice trembling, before she spun and punched the wall in a rage. “Why do I find that arousing!” She shrieked. “Those of you who aren’t useless! Come with me. This changes nothing.”
••••••••••
“We cannot rely on our visions, it seems.” Came the voice from the depths.
“WHY?” Responded the beast beneath the sands.
“Our lack of vision is evidence enough that we are blinded!” Seethed the god of the deep, “since the day that Nefarian’s observation apparatus stopped working, our visions of the future have been unreliable.”
“YES.” Agreed the god of the frozen north, “MY PUPPET IN ULDUAR HAS BEEN HOODWINKED BY SORCERY. THE TITAN’S FORGE WAS STOLEN AND HE ACCEPTS IT WITHOUT QUESTION.”
“What is worse, I believe our sister may be his servant now.”
“The. Mission. Log?” The god of the sands recalled one of the first morsels of information Nefarian had uncovered.
“YES. SHE WAS OFFERED AS A PRIZE, WAS SHE NOT?”
“Indeed. As such, I have a proposal, though not one that I relish. We can not know the mind of Bismark. We can not know his fate. But we know he had the capacity and inclination to destroy or unmake us. Nefarian has very little chance of doing so within this timeline or any other I can see. In all likelihood, he shall dominate us and lord over this world as its god.”
“UNACCEPTABLE!”
“No.”
“He is extremely likely to become an old god through his serums, though he would be a nascent one like G’huun. If that should happen, then he will be one of us. The only two possibilities would be us overcoming him in a moment of hubris after releasing us, or him achieving supremacy. In either case, this world will be dominated by the void. Assuming, of course, that he defeats Bismark.”
“You. Would. Have. Us. Submit?”
“I would have us do as we always have. Eliminate the possibility of our ultimate failure in favor of a less than ideal path where eventual victory can be assured. Should he become one of us, I find the idea of Nefarian commanding this world no more objectionable than either of you.”
“VERY WELL. WE MUST CRUSH BISMARK.”
“We. Must.”
••••••••••
The overlord, one of Xal’atath’s many new masks, read through the transcript. Merithra of the Dream didn’t truly understand the words she sent out into the world for C’thun, but she knew they were important and sent them to her mother in the hope they could be decoded. Until now, none among the retinue could process this information, as they did not have the eyes to see or ears to hear the true voices of the old gods.
What a shame that her brothers knew of her defection. Luckily, they didn’t realize the tragic ramifications of C’thun using a green dragon as his vector for communication. She snorted. Her master would be facing three chained gods, perhaps G’huun as well. So, what to do?