"THURM!" a voice called out from below, rattling the shield and making it echo the words oddly. "How nice of you to return my stones! Kneel before me and bare your throat, I may even be merciful!" "NO! WE MUSTN'T TRUSTS IT, CHO! THEY BE HERE FOR THE ONE WHO SINGS! IT CALLS TO US, WE KNOW!" "SILENCE GALL! You'll have your toy, now I want MINE!"
Shuddering at the two headed insanity [Glutinous] [Ambitious] [Murderhobo] [Pirate] and indeed, plain old self preservation urge me to go for broke. Leaning heavily on [Guided by Arcane] I drop the protections around the stones themselves and begin to draw on their full might.
"A little power is a dangerous thing" I intone, a smirk on my lips as I push for theatricality.
"Drink deep, or taste not the mana spring!" As I speak, my arms raise above my head and I begin to float above the deck, violet energy coursing off me in snapping, crackling waves.
"For a little power intoxicates the brain," I state, my voice becoming guttural as my hands flash through arcane gestures, building my spell.
"While a full cup sobers us again." In the distance, above the approaching Horde, the sparse, fluffy, dawn orange clouds quickly darken, thicken and begin to spin. First slow, and then rapidly.
"FIRESTRIKE!" an aperture opens in the base of the storm and all of the clouds light up with electricity. A moment later, a beam of pure biblical death spirals down from the sky and strikes the large smudge at the front of the column before spreading out in growing spirals to engulf the forward third of the the Twilight's Hammer.
Beside me I hear a child gasp in awe while the Draenai gird themselves against the returning shock-wave. I can see a number of them look back from the rails where they're firing their own smaller spells, arcane missiles and such, to see the Vindicators praying around my stones, and their eyes light up in comprehension. And relief.
I almost wonder if that's unfortunate, that they know it wasn't my own power that brought down divine flame upon our mutual enemies. But... it seems it's time for said enemies repost. Down on the ground, Pale are now visible as a barrier between the Twilight's Hammer and the Highmaul, their dark aura's sucking in the flames like miniature black holes. This isn't a total defense, thankfully, as even at this distance I can see many of them pop in an explosion of gore and golden flame.
The effect on Cho'Gall is... respectable. Cho is laughing, his body awash with emerald flames, but the second head, Gall is screaming incoherently. Even compared to his normal. Muttering an far-sight spell, the air ripples in front of me and the two headed menace appears before me as if on a view-screen. The Gall head and arm are burnt savagely with blisters over most of his surface. Flickering, swirling flames of gold and ash fight each other as he continues to scream, while Cho merely glows effervescent with chaotic power.
It only takes a second or two for him to stop, and Cho snaps his head to look me straight in the eyes through the spell. "I don't know whether or not to thank you for shutting him up, Thurm, but know this. When I get a hold of you and those stones, AND I WILL..." I cut the spell and growl. I've no need to hear just how I'll be tortured for eternity.
This turns out to be the clever thing to do, because just as I cut the man off, an arcane nova flashes across my deck, clearing to reveal five Highmaul Spellbreakers.
My blood runs cold as the ogres almost immediately wrestle the power of one of the stones away from me. I want to curse myself for not maintaining the shields on the stones, but, well, these are fucking spellbreakers. They're trained to do what I've been aping through [Guided by Arcane]. The fact they got through the outer shield, powered as it is by the stone, is alone terrifying.
Still, there are ways to beat spellbreakers. It doesn't even involve swarming them. Which I can right now.
As the [Traitor lvl3] kill team wrestle the stone out of my control, the Draenai Paladins who were empowering it recover from the telefrag-blastwave. Three oversized Arkonite hammers slam heavily into the magical sumo's and battle is joined.
Taking a page out of my enemies book, I blinkstep behind one of the two remaining Ogres and hop up to wrap my arm around his neck and bend him over backwards in a headlock. Unfortunately, I'm a short over-muscled fireplug of an Ogre, so instead of completing the move we both fall to the deck. My arm tightens around his neck like a vice, biceps bulging against his windpipe, my other arm pummeling his head every time he tries to cast a spell. My tattoos pulse erratically with light as the two of us struggle, and his movements slowly become weaker and weaker until he stops moving and I drop him, slamming one last blow into his stomach for good measure, making him vomit. I roughly push his head to the side so the infiltrator doesn't drown in his own vomit and get up.
While I'm wrestling my own victim, the Vindicators are facing off against the other four. Arcane crystal hammers blazing with holy light crash into the spellbreakers shields, punching partway through and creating spiderweb cracks everywhere. Blazing holy aura's blind the Ogres, disrupting their aim and healing the Draenai from the Ogres return strikes. Arcane lances spring forth from the Ogres hands to spear through the aura's and punch messy holes through the Draenai's silver armor, holes through which blue blood oozes shortly before the Light heals the wounds. The holy arua's flicker and strobe as the spellbreakers do precisely what they were trained for and the pain on the paladins faces is a clear measure of their success...
Unfortunately, Ogres Vs Draenai is a battle which history has already decided...
The Ogres lost.
Though the Ogre champions and the Draenai paladins appear to be pretty evenly matched, there are forty Draenai on my ship, and three Orcs. While most of the space goats keep up their barrage on the Twilight's Hammer far below, arrows, arcane missiles and more quickly begin to pepper the spellbreakers from behind. Most of the spells are disrupted and most of the arrows patter harmlessly against the shields as their enchantments fail, but it's clear the Ogres are being worn down.
The tide turns, bizarrely, when Garrosh, creeping along like a Rogue, uses a truesteel blade to pierce the arcane barrier of one of the Ogres and hamstring the brute. The pain distracts the spellbreaker enough for a hammer to shatter his shield entirely and pulp the Mage Hunter's head.
At this point, I'm done with my target and begin attacking the next with a beam of raw arcane power. It's a bit cliche, entirely wasteful and quickly disrupted, causing burns on my hands as the spell unravels, but now the fight is more or less 4 on 3, it takes the spellbreakers attention long enough for another hammer to break through and bury itself in his lower back.
2 vs 4.
Of course, I've forgotten the prime rule of Ogre combat.
Ogres, while arrogant, are fucking cowards.
With three of their number cut down, the remaining spellbreakers break from combat, launch themselves at the stone and vanish in yet another telefrag.
"Fuuuuuukkk...!" I stare at the spot where the pair of the vanished for a moment, fighting off panic. This is definitely a non-trivial loss.
I'm distracted by a tickling at the back of my mind and Blinkstep back to my other stone in time to weave a spell disrupting a second group-teleport zeroing in on that stone. I may, possibly, perhaps, be able to fly my ship like Jaina in B4A, [Powerful] had a note about such in it's item-description, but frankly, I'm not willing to test it. Call me a cowardly Ogre if you like, but I've got more important things to do than prove my pride by surviving Azeroth without collecting every cheat code item in grabbing distances.
As the splash of gore from one of the less fortunate teleporters (the rest rebounded elsewhere) falls across my armor and the deck, I hear a roar from the railing. It's not clear whether the Draenai are pleased or horrified, but they're certainly excited about something. Teleporting again, I appear on the rail to see a large portion of the central column missing. A quick check with [Guided by Arcane] confirms that my Grond Stone is no longer on the field, meaning that Highmaul has fled, escaped leaving only the unlucky behind at the mercy of the Orcs. Those that are left are ringed by mostly green orcs. A quick muttered scying spell reveals an orc with a gigantic, almost iconic, axe standing atop the decapitated body of a two headed Ogre.
Warsong clan. Right. Should have remembered they were part of the Highmaul raid.
That's the good part though. The thing that has half of the Draenai crying scared though is the undulating mass of grey orcs loping towards Oshu'Gun, Cho'Gall riding on their shoulders as though a prince on a palanquin at their head.
This... can't be good.
It doesn't take a genius to put it together. Between Gall's comments, the nature of the Pale and my theft of the Grond Stones, it should have been obvious. Cho'Gall wasn't following me. He wasn't predicting my movements. I walked straight into his path. Because I stole his tribute to the Horde, he had to go after another artifact of power. The same one I came here for. But instead of wanting the Naaru for it's nature, or failing that, parts; he wants it as a power source.
It's a subtle difference, I suppose.
The real problem is that, far from my earlier excuse of greed last time we met, I can't simply let him have it. They already have K'ara, the Dark Star, he's the base material for Gul'Dan's Death Knights and later several artifact weapons. The Horde with two Naaru corpses? Yeah, no. Forget the Draenai trying to gut me, I can just teleport banish them off my ship. Gul'Dan and Cho'Gall gaining a fetish for Naaru bits can only go badly for everyone.
And I'm part of everyone.
This time at least.
Rushing back to my remaining stone, I take it under my arm and kneel upon the prow of the ship, one hand touching the deck. Arcane power flows through me like a river and spreads throughout the ship like a wave. Half a second and one explosion later, the Flying Dutchman is nestled against in the forked valley of Oshu-Gun's crystalline peak.
Wasting no time, I send out streamers of Arcane Power to each of the Draenai and force my plan into their minds. One of the prime bonuses to Arcane Sorcery is the ease with which you can perform distributed spellwork. I can feel as one after another, the space goats come to understand and accept the flow of power I offer. They vanish, one after another, teleporting to places in the air, on the mountains slope, and on the ground in rings around the city sized mountain/ship.
I'm going to cast a major teleportation spell... and they're going to be my amplifiers.
I have a flashback to reading Illidans battle at the Dragonblight in Knaaks War of the Ancients series, but push it and my nostalgic grin away and begin casting the stone raised above my head. First the ships shield balloons outward, engulfing the Genedar in a hemisphere of purple light and stars. The bubble immediately comes under attack, and several of the faster pale even manage to get under the descending edge before it slices into the earth. They immediately latch on to the nearest Draneai spell-bearer and begin trying to drain him. That's when the six paladins I'd stationed about a third of the way down the slope light up like a crown of lights. Some of their power comes back to me, feeding into the shield and allowing secondary shields around him to rebuff those same Pale attackers, but most of it sinks into the mountain itself, making the entire thing begin to glow.
Several goats accept my offer of power when the assault of the pale begins and I teleport them down to take care of the problem in the growing light of the mountain while others bring the Tel'Redor portal beacon up from below decks while great runes begin to weave themselves through the air.
Deep below the earth, a pool of darkness stirs as the Pale horde approaches. It flows out of the ground and through the spherical shield, beneath the dirt, burning holes in the power field. Altering several of the runes, I tune the barrier to absorb the light now radiating out from the gem mountain and combine with the void gnawing from below. Suddenly, the power surges, pulsing outward and rebuffing both the Pale and Cho'Gall himself. I gasp as it tries to rebound back into me, creating a deadly feedback. I pour the energy back into the stone which absorbs it like a sponge, allowing me to avoid popping like a zit.
With the extra power, comes extra pain. Much like when I first stole the twin stones, my entire body bursts at the seams with power and it flows off me in waves. This time at least, I have fellows to share the pain. And the spell load. The light coming from the mountain is now a brilliant gold, but as the spell progresses streaks of violet light begin to shine through. As the power builds, reality begins to twist and bend and then, with an earth shaking boom, the mountain moves.
I have scant seconds to smile before I collapse, the stone tumbling from my arms. The last thing I see before I pass out, is Gorka and Gortag catching me by the shoulders and lowering me to the ground, Garrosh staring down at me.
~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+
I wake to a feeling of ants crawling behind my eyes, a parched throat, clenched fist of a stomach and a pounding headache to cap it off.
I open my eyes and immediately regret it. My vision is red and feel an absolutely murderous need for a caffeine. Apparently I'm making a fair amount of noise as well, because Samaara immediately appears in my field of vision and I have to fight down the urge to crush her throat to stop the noise. Closing my eyes and gripping something she offers me hard enough to heat a crack. A vessel of some sort, I realize as my hands moisten. I take a deep drink and shudder.
"How long was I out?" I ask, my voice rough, eyes still firmly closed so that I don't have a target for my irrational ire.
"Almost a week, Thurm." Crap. Then this is the punishment for [Murderhobo]. It was just an itching irritation at Garadar.
Or hell, maybe it's the result of overuse of power. Who knows?
Regardless, I push away the thoughts of blasting everything in sight just to silence the painful noises and open my eyes to focus on Samaara. My vision is still tinted with red and as I look at her I can feel my breathing speed up and heat rush through my limbs. "The Genedar?"
She nods, frowning. "Mostly sunk. We weren't expecting you to teleport the entire ship to Tel'Redor. We got lucky with the teleport expanding from a single point rather than falling from above or speeding in from the side. The mushroom heads are now free floating and docked to the slopes." She hesitates. "You... should probably stay out of sight for a while. There weren't too many deaths, but there were a lot of injuries."
I snort. It'll probably make dealing with [Murderhobo] simpler, though I'd prefer not to have this be where I get [Target of the Alliance]. "Anyone important?"
"You're still alive, aren't you?"
I blink and look at her in a new light. "You've been taking care of me?"
She blushes and nods. "Gorka as well. Garrosh is hiding though, you tried to kill him twice in your sleep and without you there to interfere, my people...aren't welcoming to orcs. Even now that we know the difference between the Mag'har and the Horde. He Gortag and Mennu have been spending most of their time on your ship."
I nod slowly, holding back a wince as the motion hurts. I take another drink from the...wait, is this a bucket? Yup, there's the handle. I take a deep draft and summon some meat from the ship. My stomach unclenches and my throat is soothed, but my vision is still red, my blood hot and the itching and hyper-violent stray thoughts remain.
I've got to go kill something.
Soon.
Dammit, this was not such a good decision.
Movement in my peripheral vision puts me on the offensive and in half a second I have a fireball in my raised hand. Despite this fast reaction however, I'm still ambushed by a pair of soft lips meeting mine. Mere inches away, my eyes meet with Samaara's surprised teal. The fire in my hand goes out and moves almost automatically to cradle the back of her head, pulling the Draenai into the kiss. My other hand goes to her hip as she begins to relax and I roll, so that she's lying back on the bed and I'm crouching over her.
"Well, now..." I murmur, releasing the lavender blushing huntress "to what do I owe the attention?"
She squirms and blushes even deeper. "It was just supposed to be on the cheek..." she temporizes quietly.
My heart sinks and I pull back. Funny, the itching is starker for it's temporary absence. I'm stopped by a hand resting itself against my cheek.
"Whatever you did last week..." golden light flares in the hand against my cheek and all murderous thoughts and confusion melt away into a warm peaceful sensation. The golden power washes down my neck and spine taking away all sorts of small aches and pains and filling my, somewhat gratuitous musculature, with a sense of relaxed power. "I don't know what it was, but I... we... those broken who participated in the teleport... can feel the light again." She sits up awkwardly on the bed and kisses me again. Intentionally this time. I stiffen, tent and chuckle, breaking the kiss and bow my head, pressing our foreheads together.
She laughs nervously, looking down, and I smirk. Sadly, she scrambles off the bed and out of our mild tangle of limbs, still blushing spectacularly. Babbling an excuse I don't hear, she quickly leaves the room.
The need to kill; the itching, red vision and murderous thoughts however, do not return. Or rather they do, but only as a vague tugging at the back of my mind. Something that needs my attention, but is no longer an urgent need.
"Interesting..." I murmur, thinking about the various implications of what just happened. "Very interesting indeed."
~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+
Outside is a bustle of activity. Lines of Draenai carrying tools, weapons, and large chunks of white crystal swarm around like lines of ants converging on an apple. Said apple is the half mile wide stump of the Genedar, around which no less than fifty Zangar caps are now docked. A dozen of the shrooms, each the size of a city block, hold Draenic architecture of off-grey colored stone that swoops and curves softly, studded by sudden jagged purple gems. The rest of the caps are lashed together with improvised moorings of various sorts and crystal looking energy bridges. On these, the remains of the once great dimensional ship is piled with a combination of military precision and artistic chaos stemming from a hive of workers breaking the pieces down further and reassembling them into odd piles of... something I can't see at this distance.
The room I've been sleeping in is on a surprisingly small Zangar cap tethered off to the side of one of the residential caps, but NOT the one where my ship is tied.
Frowning, I run my hands through the air carving a series of runes in the air with quick movements, forming a scrying spell. There is a fair amount of resistance to the spell and my frown becomes a scowl. With a bit of focus, [Guided by Arcane] shows me the cloak the Draenai have thrown over the area and how to integrate my spell within it. I make the corrections and begin scanning for my ship. It takes a few minutes, but I find it at one of the other residential caps. This one has larger buildings, shining with a golden light. Looking inside my ship I quickly find Garrosh, Gortag, Gorka and Mennu, but...
God damnit! My STONE! Where is it?!
My focus zooms out and breaks into a kaleidoscope of magic colors. Purple, blue and gold predominate, but the soft green of life magic isn't rare either. Just beyond my vision a shadow of black coils behind the blue and gold, but it doesn't seem to have any direction, so I dismiss it as emanations from K'ure. With a series of gestures I clear the map of each the black shadow, the blue of the Zangar sea, the golden blot of the Genedar, the teal of the living Zangar, and am left with only purple. Arcane covers the map in a pulsing web of magi-tech, ranging from the cloaking devices, dimensional shields and a rudimentary weather control spell to handheld communication gems and bristling armor, tools and weapons.
There are several bright stars among the mess and I focus on each of them in turn. The first is a crafting station where I almost get distracted by the complicated mass of developing clarke tech. The second is...a hive of pods in the middle of the great ship. If I didn't know about the Exodar and how our Draenai players woke up I'd have thought it reminiscent of the Matrix. The third is a cluster of bright points that turn out to be the source of Tel'Redor's magical utilities. Finally, I find my stone. It's in the golden building near where my ship was docked earlier. Zooming in on it, I find, to no surprise, that it's a temple of sorts. This close, I'm unable to filter out a brilliant golden light off to one side and turn away from it to find my prize.
The room holding the artifact is small, dark and has a floor of spongy fungus. Odd for a temple, but then this is a temple built atop a mushroom. Kneeling in front of the stone is a small crowd of Draenai with warped features, and at their head... Akama.
I growl, fuming and sit back on my own mushroom to think.
Alright, I've been out for several days, after a climactic battle. I'm still not entirely certain why I'm here instead of on my ship. Samaara made note that I'd cured a number of broken. I'm almost certain that was due to the Nether-Light forging at the end, not the stone itself. I had kicked Akama off my ship through, when he assaulted my newest minion, so he wouldn't know that. He WOULD know about how I'd connected everybody to the stone as the power source for the teleport. I suppose it follows that he'll assume it was the stone specifically, and want to keep it close until he can figure out how to purify his kin. That was his goal after all. Save the broken.
...I'm probably going to have to steal it again, when I leave.
Fuck.
I consider briefly telefragging the broken community organizer or experimenting with a bit of good ol' Scry & Die, but am distracted by the feeling on a hand on my arm. Looking up, I can see the broken are all looking...no, not at me, but at someone beside me. Turning my head, and looking down slightly, I find the earlier source of overwhelming light.
'Forgive Akama, Thurm...' the figure speaks softly, 'he does not understand what he does.' The pillar of light turns to look up into my eyes. 'come find me. We must speak.'
Then he turns and leaves.
Well... that answers one question. Velen has definitely recovered from whatever was ailing him during my last visit. I glance back at Akama, [Envious] still gnawing at my nerves, and make a couple of arcane gestures. The spell is small, but it still makes him stumble as my force construct slaps him across the back of the head.
Scry & Die experiment 1: success.
~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+~! #$%^&*()_+
Leaving Akama and the other broken behind, snubbed by their prophet, felt incredibly good, I must admit.
Still, while everything is fun and games, some of it also serious work.
My scrying follows the ancient space goat as he moves through the rooms of the temple one after another, before drawing closed a curtain on a room at on the third floor. The room is open on one side to the elements and sports a large clam like balcony covered in runework done in golden crystal. At the rooms apex is the bottom of a large jagged purple crystal that appears to my sight to be projecting a dome over the entire community. I'm briefly distracted, deciphering just what it does when Velen speaks again.
"Please, child, join me. I do not have the Soda you are fond of, but I will swear by the tea."
I try not to let my jaw fall open. Velen is, after all, a prophet guided by the Light. Sobering and steeling my expression, I project a mirror image of myself into the room, and take a seat on one of the thick cushions before teleporting in, trading places with the construct with only a whisper of a pop.
"I'll admit, I forgot just how the light works for a moment." I reply, accepting the cup he offers. "The one true path, the Naaru call it. It's less truth and more an illumination of the strongest probability, given it can't account for those guided by the Void."
I take a sip and the Prophet hums. "The light believed you would understand" he acknowledged evenly. Then he chuckles at my grimace. "The sugar is over there" he waves at a counter on the far wall. I weave a small spell to summon the needed sweetener from across the room and then another to call some clefthoof milk from my ship. "I wouldn't suggest that." The grandfather goat comments, amused before I can drop the dollop of cream in. "The leaves will react badly and curdle the cream."
I sigh heavily and suck down the cream drop before mixing the tea to ensure the sugar is dissolved. "So... is there any point in my usual production?" I ask him before trying the tea again. "Or did you want to leave yourself with an air of mystery? Given your comments so far, I can't imagine the light hid much of anything from you."
"You are... difficult to see, actually." He replies, voice tight. "Your path intersects with the shadow regularly, though you seem to overcome it in each case. Regardless, I am an old man... would you truly deny me the chance to be entertained? There have been too few moments in my peoples history where my sight has not been pivotal and that leads to a certain... reverence."
"People with sticks up their ass, you mean." I reply bluntly.
He chuckles. "Quite."
I smirk "I intend to make myself too much of a nuisance to have people put on formalities around, or expect them from, me." I take a swig of the tea, it's actually pretty good with a bit of sugar. "Let's see... From what I understand, you lost your vision of the future during the crash not because you saw the future in the void, but because you didn't learn how to balance them. The void shelters all, and so when it sees the shape of things to come, it sees all possibilities, and judges them all equal. On the upper hand, this allows disciples of the void to break the iron chains of fate... they could save us all, if they cared. Unfortunately, the nature of dark magic drives weak minds to nihilism and insanity, unable to untangle the paths and see cause from effect. The Light on the other hand is the Revelation, removing the question of what hides in the unknowable beyond and bringing things into focus. You've been learning, but it will crystallize in about 30 years when you return to the Netherlight Temple and return Sakara to the Light."
The prophet's eyes widen and he almost drops his cup, spilling the warm green liquid across his lap. "Truly, Thurm? This is good news." Then he frowns. "But you are changing things. I have had many visions in the past few days where you lament your actions."
I shrug. "Perhaps. But as Aman'Thul told Nozdormu, Time is a river. Whether a stone will change it's course, or if it will lead to the same place regardless," I snap my fingers and reverse time on the priests cup, refilling it, clean and pure. "I am the master of my fate."
"I am the captain of my soul." Velen finishes, and the pair of us grin at each other.
Then he turns serious again. "Of the things I could not see, is what it is you intend to do in the depths of the Genedar. And that is what I needed to speak with you about. The Light has warned me to stop you. I may yet; but your actions during my infirmity have earned you a chance to explain. What is it you intend with K'ure?"