NOVEL NEXT The Battle of Ahn’Quiraj I
6/17 noon
The Quiraji crashed out of the gates immediately, their precognitive god having seen this coming quite some time ago through basic scouting and logic. No magical surveillance necessary. Naturally, they walked out into the opening act: Niela and the Medivas. The first few waves of demons were enveloped in a mixture of frost and flame, as all the heat was drawn out of the air while all friction was magnified a thousand fold. Those two spells were maintained from behind an arcane barrier on an elevated platform, which the Quiraji needed to get past in order to assault the rest of Kalimdor.
This defense was expected to crumple quickly, as the Medivas did not have the luxury of infinite mana, but it funneled the bugs out along the walls of AQ, where they made excellent targets for the nerubian anti-personnel guns. Any that survived the shooting gallery would find themselves in the loving embrace of the Horde or Night Elven forces. More importantly, the Medivas were strong enough to demand that C’thun start committing his heavy anti-magic specialists to clear the bottleneck.
Records from uldum warned me about Anubisaths. They were a type of elite Titan keepers that were typically created in networked sets of four, allowing them to share their training and abilities. Typically, they proceeded to hyper specialize in one or two techniques each, which they shared along their networks to create a well rounded team of four. One of those common specializations was the ability to reflect temperature based magic.
As such, when Broody Mediva suddenly froze solid and Gamer Mediva burst into flames, Leotheras and a dozen chargers were primed to blitz the giant obsidian dog men. It needed to be quick, before they could be properly reinforced, which is why I sent the Deathseeker and some elite-yet-disposable demons. According to the production records, C'thun had a maximum of 400 Anubisaths, minus those killed in the takeover and the last War of the Shifting Sands. They were premium, irreplaceable units I couldn’t easily take for myself, they had to go.
That was really my strategy through the whole process. Deliberate weaknesses that could legitimately be exploited, only for my troops to fall back and destroy the now-exposed heavies. I had Kyrians patrolling the borders of the Shadowlands, gathering my fallen so they wouldn’t be lost even if their corpses were. Total physical annihilation would mean administrative leave from combat roles and little else, and anything short of that could be patched up in no time.
My demonically manned hatchery, ostensibly the garrison supporting the Medivas, was meant to be overrun. That’s what the mana-bomb I had Archaedes build was for, with a payload similar to the one that destroyed Theramore in the canon timeline. Once the area was sufficiently saturated with bugs, the bomb was manually detonated on-site by Feng, a pandaren slave who had been instrumental in Vashj’s defeat. We were planning on hitting her with a truck anyway, and I saw no reason why we couldn’t do it to her as a physically strong Kyrian capable of flight instead of her normal fuzzy non-combatant self.
Behind the demonic area of influence was where I had the centaur corralled. It was a huge open plain where their superior speed could really be leveraged, and a small “accidental” weak spot allowed the burrowing insects to create tunnels through. The centaur were midrange combatants, and seemed like a softer target than the druid backed Sentinels to the left or the mixed orc, Tauren, and troll forces on the right. Even before the mana bomb went off, the Quiraji were funneling through into the centaur range and creating an underground base in what they didn’t yet realize was nothing but a massive kill zone. They’d probably put it together when Theradras started collapsing their tunnels.
Behind the centaur, the armies of the human kingdoms waited patiently. Stormwind, of course, was led by a newly empowered Bolvar Fordragon. I don’t recall him ever doing much of note as the third Lich King, but apparently it counted. Gina would lead from the front whenever the enemy got to her. The combined forces of The Scarlet Crusade and Undercity stood under the banner of a reunified Lordaeron, where Sylvanas and Demetria stood side by side. The gnomes held their own fortified piece of land full of long range siege weapons to support their neighbors, and the Grimtotem tauren were allowed their own little slice of the pie as well. A dozen other groups, like the Gurubashi and the blood elves, each held their own chunk of land where their unique military doctrines would call for different counters from C’thun.
Behind the minor factions I had dragon roosts guarded by the titanic keepers and titanforged, incidentally including a few Anubisaths of my own, made at Uldum. They were intended to deliver death from above once C’thun’s forces were sufficiently drawn out, and with any luck the titanforged would never see combat. They still weren’t the last line of defense, though.
Way at the back, I had the Scourge. They were a curated bunch, but not necessarily aiming for raw power. No, I had my Val’Kyr necromancers back there, along with anyone else that could take a corpse and turn it back into a soldier for me. I still had abominations, San’Layn troopers, and frost wyrms flowing through to fill out the ranks, but the most important role for the Scourge would be one of support.
Thanks to a certain perk, my foes would have a blind spot for resurrection. No matter how many times I picked someone up and threw them back into the fight, they’d never make the connection; the Medivas were reformed only a few minutes after their position was taken by the enemy, for example. The Scourge could serve as a last line of defense if they really needed to, but that seems unlikely unless the old god surprised me. Of course, Naxxramas was on standby just in case it’s mistress needed to fly forth and raise a few hundred soldiers for me.
••••••••••
Merithra of the Dream abandoned her blank expression and assigned task as a relay, summoning a portal to the master’s pocket plane. She held it open just long enough for a woman with flowing red hair to step through, flanked by a gemstone studded black drake and a floating woman with white hair and silver skin. They were joined by a flowing mass of draconic women with flickering fel auras, who took control of the portal and quickly charged down the hallway where the chained god waited.
Meanwhile, a few dozen heroes supported by Dommes charged past C’thun’s chambers. Once Ossirian was dealt with, they’d circle back on the old god if he was still up.
••••••••••
In Nazjatar, Nefaria fell over in shock as three booming words tore through her mind, using the connection forged by the god of the depths over many years of manipulations.
“I. LOVE. YOU.” The voice of C’thun rung in her ears. “TITANS. TELL. N’ZOTH.”
Nefaria shook off her surprise, as well as her irritation from being ordered around, and did as requested. She expected an explanation.
••••••••••
The beam of energy clipped Darcell as she ran into the room where C’thun’s eye rested. For the first time since becoming a Titan, she felt pain as several layers of divine flesh were melted off of her leg in an instant. The old god seemed sluggish, at least compared to the demon huntress, as he flailed his tentacles wildly at her. She chopped the tentacles easily enough, noting with satisfaction that Tessa and Lividia were doing much the same. It seemed that in his weakened state he was having difficulty dealing with all three of them at once.
Darcell played defensively, allowing Tessa to draw the old god’s glare while her leg regenerated. With Lividia’s aid, the angelic woman could take anything that C’thun dished out. The Flameborn were dying pretty quickly, but there was only so much space for them in here anyway. Replacements were constant, and they were mostly here to cordon off the area.
“YOU. ARE. INSUFFICIENT.”
All at once, the tentacles surged, wrapping around Darcell’s legs with incredible speed and constricting. Across the room, the same thing happened to Lividia and Tessa as well, and a beam scythed through the Flameborn.
“ARROGANT.”
For the first time since she joined the retinue, Darcell panicked. How had they ever thought they could fight something like this? She felt like a child, playing with her father’s tools. She was nobody, just some thug fighting with borrowed power.
“Get out of my head!” Darcell barely heard the roar from the dragon across the room. What was the point? The irritating flashes of light hurt her eyes. She screwed them closed, but her demon hunter senses pierced right through her eyelids.
The whole world lay before her, composed of multicolored fire. The blazing white amulet around her neck, the enveloping purple folds of the old god’s tentacles. Her own body made of a light blue light shot through with green and… dark purple? No, the purple wasn’t her. It wasn’t supposed to be there. It was forcing its way in.
Darcell was still terrified, but she was able to push herself into a fight response. She had to rip them out, to get rid of them, and the powers of a hero were practically instincts at this point. With a half unconscious act of will, the demon huntress forced energy out of every pore, enveloping her body with fel fire and igniting the tendrils of shadow energy.
The old god instinctively recoiled from its anathema, before focusing all of his efforts on her. Lividia was thrashing with rage, relying on flailing claws and hundreds of back to back holy novas to stop the rejuvenated god’s tentacles from burying her. Tessa was pinned against a wall, too tough to crush and too strong to ignore, but wasn’t even a meaningful distraction to a being capable of splitting his attention a thousand ways.
Darcell didn’t have much choice. If this was going to turn into a duel with a god, she needed to go all out. She triggered her ultimate, metamorphosis, growing into a demonic form twice her size. It was time to see exactly how much more effective fel magic really was against beings of shadow.
••••••••••
“Alright. Send in the four horsemen to plug the hole.” I ordered, "Not front lines, just close enough to put their auras into play.”
I wasn’t taking the field, not unless Neffie was sighted. I was a fucking bronze dragon and a commander. I was quite happy helping to coordinate the fight at 1/16th speed, mostly by making judgment calls on exactly who to send as Varian analyzed the situation. He still was too indecisive to make snap decisions without a lot of pressure, bless him, and Saurfang was aggressive enough to overrule him without someone here to intercede.
Alurmi, my first bronze dragon, entered the war room nervously. “Sir, there’s something you should know.”
“Shoot.” I assumed it was important if she was interrupting; she’d been serving as an assistant for Soridormi, so odds were good that this was a message straight from my resident goddess of time.
“A disruptive time field has formed in your primary timeline.” She explained. “It’s accelerating time by a factor of one hundred in a small area. We are seeing all the hallmarks of Infinite activity.”
“Okay.” I turned it over in my head, trying to figure out what it could mean. Most likely nothing good. “Is that going to be a problem for the timeline? Where is it happening?”
“We believe it may be in Nazjatar.”
“Shit. Did we ever get any updates from the team Vashj sent?”
“That’s what prompted us to speak to you directly. All our agents in the area were killed shortly before the time distortion began.”
“Yeah. That’s definitely Nefarian.”
I steepled my fingers. There weren’t many places left that I couldn’t blindly charge into, but Nazjatar was one of them. My armies were mostly optimized for air or ground combat; my navy was pretty anemic and my subaquatic options never really developed past “I can probably turn people into murlocs or Naga or something.” Add to that the current pitched battle with an actual god, and I was going to need to be very careful about how much I split my focus. At least I had a small team of superheavies available. Tunnel fighting really didn’t lend itself to full sized titans.
“Hey Eonar,” I spoke into the air. “How are you and Trixie likely to do underwater?”
“Well enough, I think. We don’t need air and I’m a proficient swimmer.”
“Great. I think I know where Neffie is and I need someone to go disrupt whatever the fuck she’s doing. Gather the Naga and go check it out.” I checked my notes from the ops team. “Leotheras is dead, so bring Mankrik too. We can find his wife later.”
••••••••••
Final company benefits package build:
Tagalongs: Lividia and Talaada
Letters of Recommendation: Child by Lividia, Child by Azshara, Child by Aegwynn, Tony, Nefaria, Vanessa, Onyxia, Sylvanas, Sally, and Abby
Meeting Place: Gain a permanent, generally quite small, Demiplane where you can meet with fellow employees of the Company you know. Within this demiplane you may relax for up to one hour per day and extend invitations to friends, allies, or enemies to meet, gamble, and trade resources. Acceptable trades and wagers will be overseen by the Testing Coordinators of each visitor’s world.
Animal folk become more human looking, generally looking like humans with pronounced animalistic traits. More bestial than Faunus from Rwby, but not by a ton.
Female undead are always aesthetically pleasing and capable of having sex. Generally speaking they are also interested in having sex, though they are no less aggressive and only slightly less deadly despite that.
PvP is never incentivized. Should two testers come into conflict it will be on entirely personal grounds. Drawbacks involving PvP can override this; you knew what you were signing up for.
••••••••••
So. Time to start choosing Erich’s next build. Erich is going to have a relatively limited starting budget and missions will be mostly on the larger side.