NOVEL NEXT The Battle of Ahn’Quiraj II
3/17 afternoon
Deep under the sea, in the center of the Naga city of Nazjatar, there was a seal. It was a Titan facility known by many names; the Last Prison, the Circle of Stars, Uldanis, and Containment facility 3. The golden walls of the facility were remarkably intact, though it had been scrubbed clean of all Titan maintenance millennia ago.
At the time it became properly relevant to my story, it was enveloped with an amber glow maintained by a dozen dragons with scales of tarnished bronze. At the entrance of the containment chamber, a woman with form fitting black armor spoke to her newest recruit.
“What is the purpose of all these?” She snapped, “if you have your power restored, why are we not moving to support C’thun?”
“How did that end for you last time, mistress?” The God of the Deeps asked her, “no, I think we both need time to prepare. From your memories, the Paladin girl grew stronger when captured. How long did that take?”
“About a week.”
“Would you say that the Naga will be able to hold him off for two hours when he’s distracted?” N’Zoth asked smugly, “I think they will, now that my eyes are open. He brings Eonar against us, but does not truly understand the gravity of the situation. Oh, and I’ve invited Azshara to your lessons; she needs to be brought to heel or Bismark will snatch her from you with a touch. Come now, while I grow strong enough to break my bonds, I have time to teach you.”
••••••••••
Things started to get messier once the endless tide of Silithid were turned inward. My grand strategy had been equal parts containment and distraction, so it was very unfortunate for me when C’thun wrote off the outside world for now and recalled the majority of his troops to reinforce both himself and Ossirian the Unscarred, my two biggest targets. I was primarily here to get 100 credits and a new binding, maybe awaken Xal’atath. Unless I wanted to get bogged down in the mother of all sieges while Neffie prepped for our next round, I really needed to step things up.
The snowy field of my pocket plane was an absolute madhouse as I redeployed my big names into AQ. It was more complicated than this, but the summary is that if you were less than 10 feet tall and could kill a hundred men with your bare hands you were going into the tunnels. My dragons started to take a far more active role outside, supporting my sea of mooks from aloft, but C’thun had five thousand years with nothing better to do than to devise counterplay for dragons. If I hadn’t brought a hodgepodge of gargoyles, gnomish gyrocopters, and griffon riders I would have lost the air war; as it was C’thun’s forces were still far better coordinated than my own.
••••••••••
Darcell was losing, albeit very slowly. She had roughly equal raw power to C’thun, at least in demon form, but he could see magic just as well as she could. He saw the speed at which Immolation depleted her reserves, which admittedly would still take hours, and if she turned it off for more than a few seconds he would attempt to entangle her. Lividia was in a similar place, channeling the full power of Light’s Wrath to create a small safe zone, and though Tessa managed to slip out several times she had difficulty inflicting meaningful damage on C’thun.
Ultimately it was a logistics problem. On paper, the girls were stronger, but C’thun had every advantage. Tessa had more raw strength, but C’thun was planted deep in the ground and had superior leverage. Lividia had a nearly infinite supply of light energy to draw upon, but C’thun absolutely refused to give her enough time to use anything but the most inefficient spells at her disposal. Darcell could cause serious harm to C’thun, burning through his tentacles easily, but he had millennia worth of energy stored to regenerate with; she would be exhausted long before he would, especially when he was actively playing defense.
Of course, the biggest problem was that it wasn’t a 3v1, even if you discounted the raging battle of minions struggling to tip the scales in any way they could. It was 3v1000. Each and every tentacle knew intimately what every other tentacle was up to, but it was also animated by its own fragment of C’thun’s psyche, constantly being split off as new tentacles grew. They cooperated perfectly and did not fear death, but also adapted and acted on their own initiative to mix things up. Deep underground, he had dozens of nodes psychically controlling his forces outside, and it wasn’t even a substantial mental strain on him.
Darcell dove out of the way of another laser, responding with a barrage of fireballs that scorched C’thun’s core. The burns healed, but to overcome the trace corruption he needed to expend a disproportionate amount of energy. In a very real way Darcell had given up on beating C’thun, instead just hoping to keep him occupied until her backup arrived. She assumed that meant after Ossirian was dealt with, but she lucked out.
After the next large blast of energy from his central eye, a dozen large figures entered the large chamber directly. The best people I had when it came to resisting old god corruption without defenses: The Titanic overseers of Ulduar and Uldum. Rajh and Thorim charged in, weapons aloft, to start hacking away at the old god.
They mostly just forced him to commit more resources, but in a battle of attrition that was all they really needed to do. The battle for Ahn’Quiraj wasn’t won yet, but if this room stayed secure? It would be.
••••••••••
“Did Neffie capture C’thun?” I asked Xal’atath bluntly. “More precisely, can you think of any other plausible explanation for him bypassing my girls’ defenses?”
“No, your first guess is probably correct. I’m sorry, I didn’t expect them to be this desperate without confirmation.” She thought, “likely it was you bringing in Eonar. If they see you as aligned with the titans their instincts will prioritize you as the highest classification of threat.”
“Meaning?”
“Full cooperation.” She answered with a sigh. “The titans are a true threat, they can not be allowed free reign under any circumstances. Further, given that they managed it without us knowing, I don’t think Merithra has been C’thun’s primary mode of communication for at least a few days. If they figured out that precognition didn’t work they no doubt started making deductions, and the fact that the green dragonflight was captured in its entirety is fairly obvious to a suspicious mind. Likely my intel from the last few days is useless at best.”
“Understood, but how are we doing in AQ?” A few dozen of Xal’atath’s puppets were in the facility right now, so she had fairly up to date information.
“Terribly, based on our desired timetable.” She shook her head. “I’d suggest bringing Eonar back, but we can’t give N’Zoth time to scheme. Whatever he’s up to is going to be dangerous.”
••••••••••
“Ny'alotha is not a place.” N’Zoth explained to his student. “And yet it is. It is the world of your absolute victory, of your enemies fears, an extension of your psyche and a home of your strength.”
The words were a summary, something for Nefaria’s primary psyche to latch onto, as a hundred minds attempted to internalize a lesson N’Zoth had never intended to teach.
“It is a manifestation of what could be, or more accurately what the viewer does not know for certain is not. You can conjure their friends betraying them, your forces outnumbering them, their allies broken at your feat, even as not a mile away those allies are seeing the same visions.”
It was an incredible, if fragile, power. It required a skill with psychology and attention to detail that none but an old god could hope to match. Indeed, were he not captured N’Zoth would never have shared his secrets even with another old god.
“Alternate timelines are an absolute gift when it comes to Ny’alotha. They haven’t the foggiest clue what exists there, so they can’t refute it. It’s how I was able to fabricate your future of victory, though in this chained state I could not bring them into contact with a world not their own. A useful blockade, a defense against a danger you didn’t know existed.”
“I… I can do anything?” Nefaria wheezed out from her position on the floor of the Last Prison.
“You can, mistress, so long as you preserve your target’s belief you are a true goddess.” The metal floor shrieked as the old god forced his way from his containment, restored almost fully to his peak of power. “Enough lessons though. Perhaps it is time for a demonstration? Let us show Eonar a nightmare. It won’t be full power, but may I review this catalog? I’d like to see what it’s possible for you to have bought.”
••••••••••
Eonar landed on the ocean floor, and began calling out for aid. The wildlife of Azeroth, many of which were seeded here by the titans millennia ago, heard her call and converged. As the Titan of life made her way towards the eternal palace, flanked by dozens of elite naga troopers, a legion of fish formed behind her. Impromptu, yes, and in all likelihood devastating to the ecosystem. It didn’t matter to Eonar; against an enemy like the old gods, she would have sacrificed every living thing on this planet. She would have cried afterwards, then, but a few thousand fish were hardly worth a second thought.
She stopped on a ridge overlooking the Naga city, noting a distortion in the air. Something felt wrong. A familiar tingling sensation…
At the last possible moment, Eonar summoned a wall of coral in front of her to absorb the lightning strike. It was obliterated in an instant, but very little of the arcing electricity reached her. Her eyes widened when she looked down into the city and saw Golgonneth reveal himself from behind a veil of invisibility.
“No… damn you.” She crouched and began calling up the plants of the seabed to disable the Titan of Sea and Storms reinforced with her own will to constrict him with force that could crush adamantine. She spoke, trusting her handler to relay the information. “I still don’t know what the distortion is, but Nefarian has captured a Titan. He’s weak enough that he must be freshly captured, so I should be able to disable him, but we need to stop whatever this. I need backup. Now.”
••••••••••
I flickered into existence next to Eonar less than a breath later and began summoning. Kerrigan wasn’t quite powerful enough to take on a Titan, but she could rip the Naga commandos moving to assault Eonar apart quite easily. Once my demons, the ones I still had in this world anyway, were busy backing up a very confused Mankrik I looked around the battlefield.
Something felt very off about all this. The Naga seemed almost too ready, and I didn’t think it was likely that Neffie had just been sitting on a Titan yesterday and didn’t think he was worth bringing. Spikes of vertigo shot through me when I tried to analyze anything; they were unpleasant, but thanks to stress defense they mostly just confirmed that I was on to something.
“Xal’atath, I think there might be illusions or… something. Get some overseers down here.” My handler would relay the orders, of course. “Anyway, I have a visual on the temporal distortion. I’m willing to bet that Neffie is in there. I’m instituting protocol Jenkins.”
••••••••••
Winning binding:
I owe you my life- People in the land of Skyrim are notoriously needy, a reputation that is somewhat overstated in most variants of this world. Normally you will only be given missions for major world events or large scale quests. With this binding, many (but certainly not all) people you may encounter will have personal missions you may do for them. Upon completion, you may either capture them or accept an alternate reward. 5 credits., but high growth potential.
So how about our Origin?