Title: Karma
Description: "Just because Chromie is a time-seeing dragon doesn't mean she always gets second chances."
Notes1: The only reason I wrote this chapter was because a certain somebody assumed in his review that I put this story on hold for him because I was waiting for him to comment on it. Uh...no. You're dead wrong. Let me tell you guys and gals one thing: I didn't put this on hold for you. I didn't put this on hold for him, either. It was put on hold because I have this thing called A JOB, and at this job, for this week and next, half those days I'm going to be putting in a total of thirty-six hours. I should and DO NOT want to have to resort to posting my schedule on my profile just so that certain somebody or unspoken parties wonder where the hell I've been to. Another reason this was put on hold was because I was working on OTHER STORIES. FOUR OF THEM, if anybody's keeping count. There are also other, longer stories that I plan to get back to in the near future. But, yeah, I'm a busy person. I don't put shit on hold just so you can walk in here and say "Oh, are you doing this for me?" No. I'm not. And you're pretty damn arrogant if you think that's the case.
Notes2: And that other chapter I've mentioned in specific reviews? Congratulations, you guys are going to wait for it - and future installments - until I find the time during my schedule to get it finished and uploaded. I write when I want. I'm not your bitch. Are we clear on that? I had better hope we are, or we're going to have problems.
Notes3: If this offends anyone in the slightest...I'm kind of sorry, but I need to get this point across, and if I have to be a bitch about it to make it crystal clear then you can bet I will. I have a life, too, you know. I don't always write. I have other hobbies than just this.
"TAKE HEED, MORTALS! I SHALL ARRIVE SOON, WITH THE DEMON LORD CLOSE BEHIND."
"Darkness, he just fell not even two minutes ago, and he's already back?" Sylvanas complained, shielding her eyes against the sunlight crowning the peak of the sky. It sat at its apex, between the radiant blue of the High Heavens and the apocalyptic, crimson nightmare of the Burning Hells. "It's not like they do much damage to each other, anyway. They can take the time to recuperate."
"Time means nothing to an immortal," said Chromie, limping up behind her. She was missing an arm from having it hacked off by the Butcher, pulled a hamstring doing some impossible acrobatic trying to avoid Li-Ming's magic missiles, and one of her hair buns had been lopped by Sonya's blades, but she was still smiling, either uncaring of the pain going through her conjured form or, perhaps because it came from being a dragon, not feeling it at all as a mortal would. "Just imagine that somewhere, out in the Realm of Shadows, it's taking them hundreds of thousands of years to reform their basic constitution in a matter of real-world seconds. Only to, you know, getting slaughtered by five people from across the cosmos. The League's gotta reward us little folk with something for our troubles. It'd be a bloodbath if they weren't handicapped."
"Handicapped my ass! If they're really who they say they are, they wouldn't need our help trying to wipe the other out. They're probably just as bored, if not more so, than the rest of the Powers." Sylvanas lowered her hand and took up her bow, waving for Chromie. "Let's go. If we're fast, we can get the drop on Beleth before the rest of his team convenes on us." Twin shadows were descending onto the battlefield, winged and beautiful and terrible, polar opposites of good and evil—the armored, radiant Ilarian and the muscular, gloomy Beleth. A rush of wind and power would complete their landing, and anyone caught in the shockwave would be blown away; at worst, it would expose them to the opposing team, but Sylvanas and Chromie were behind the gate at the bottom lane, far enough to avoid the strength pouring from their epicenters.
When it had passed and the wind had died to a sigh, Sylvanas poked her head outside the holographic gate and scanned the area. The coast was clear, for mostly everyone was at the top lane fighting for the right to claim the Khazra for their own purposes at the time Ilarian and Beleth announced their presences. She waved for Chromie once more, Chromie nodded, and together they left the safety of the premises and out into the lane toward the smoke vents leading to the battlefield.
A ringing warble hailed from somewhere deep within those vents, and Sylvanas found herself looking down at a line of blue light going right through her stomach. It was not her Nova's sights were trained on, but "Chromie! Stay behind me!" She snapped this warning with a whirling snap of her head over shoulder. Her bow was set to position, readied and aimed toward what she hoped would be between Nova's eyes.
Instead, she caught the briefest glimpse of Chromie rising into the air on bronze dragon wings, her feet lifting from the ground as though she were a cherub and not a dragon in gnomish guise. "Oh, hey, would you look at the time! It's half past AIN'T GONNA HAPPEN!" Then she took off like a rocket at hypersonic speed, trailing afterimages of herself and twin rivers of sand.
Sylvanas's jaw dropped and her ears shot straight up. "Wait, what—" She was cut short by the first photon shot knocking her head clean off shoulders. The last two shots sailed clear over her collapsing body and slammed into the gate, which absorbed most of the impact. Her head evaporated in a whirl of dust and atoms.
From the vent, Nova gaped at the corpse of the Banshee Queen. Horror mingled with surprise and amusement, but in the few seconds she spent standing in an existential stupor, it was horror that won out in the end. Clenching her teeth, she hugged the rifle to her chest and scrambled away, preferring to find shelter in the safety of another vent Sylvanas would not be able to find her in.
But Nova was far from the truth; when Sylvanas respawned at the Hall of Storms, she wasn't mad at her. She couldn't even fault her for it, and for the first time in the history of the Nexus, Sylvanas would not kill Nova in retaliation, annoyance, or boredom, and the saddest thing of all was that no one would ever know.
Sylvanas urged her mount, the grey stallion everybody knew and loved and affectionately called Mr. Horse, off the steps and studied the horizon over the looming gates. Ilarian and Beleth were flying across the battlefield, clashing blades once, twice, and then teleporting to a different set of platforms.
Sylvanas reached into her rune bag and withdrew the handheld. Clicked on a few keys and zoomed out of the mini-map on the screen. Everybody was still up. Still alive.
She nodded. She put away the portable, closed the bag, and pressed the jutted wings of her heels against Mr. Horse's flanks to get him moving.
When she arrived at the westernmost gate, she dismounted him and sent him back through the Nexus. She crossed the holographic energy shield that powered through the gate itself and the twin cannon towers, past the Khazra siege camp that watched her with wary, bullish eyes, and hunkered down in a smoke vent behind the cover of a fancy wall of High Heaven artistry. She peered around the corner, making sure to keep her ears folded low and against her skull.
It was pure chaos out there. Sonya and the Butcher were trading blow for blow with swords and axes, splashing blood over the ground. Gazlowe was stomping after Morales, his robo-goblin equipped with whirring, screaming saws on the ends of its hands. Li-Ming and Tassadar were taking potshots at Ilarian. Nova was nowhere in sight, but perhaps she was hiding, lining her shots and waiting for the right moment to drop her cover. And Chromie—
Ah, there was Chromie. Lobbing dragon-shaped missiles and waterfalls of sand at them, pushing them back toward Beleth. Just the usual sort of thing Chromie would do.
Sylvanas didn't take the bow off its sling. She didn't bother to check how many arrows she had in her quiver. She waited until Ilarian finished swiping his weapons through the air in a spinning attack, waited for the Nephalem and the protoss to inch closer toward the angelic immortal, waited for Chromie to prime one of her hourglass traps in the smoke vent, waited, waited….
Now!
She vaulted over the wall, issuing a low whistle that elicited the spectral banshees to materialize and crawl across the arena. She calculated the apex of the distance crossed and, when it reached that point where they started to dissipated, Sylvanas covered the ground in a dash of black, unholy fog. She reformed seconds later right beside Chromie and several feet away from Li-Ming.
"Sylvanas!" Chromie exclaimed. "Oh hey, listen, about earlier…no hard feelings, right? You were gonna come back anyway, and I needed to go back to restore my health. It wouldn't do us any good if both of us were eliminated this late in the game—"
"That's great, Chromie," Sylvanas ground out forcibly.
"Actually, with the way things are, it'd work out in our favor," said Li-Ming, grinning. "Wouldn't you agree, Tassadar?"
"I believe it would be in our best interest if we made a hasty retreat," said the protoss. "I sense a shift in the atmosphere, one that does spell favorably toward us."
"Oh, don't be silly!" Li-Ming waved him off. "Look at her! She's either suicidal or she's just plain ole giving up. I saw what happened to you, Sylvanas, old girl. Any lesser person would feel the same way, even a self-proclaimed Queen!"
"Yes, that's right," Sylvanas said.
"Well that's fine and dandy! After all, this is territory I've come to familiarize myself with in my travails in my sector. It's certainly no Undercity, that's for sure. I wouldn't expect you to know every nook and cranny there is to see this side of the Nexus…or, uh, whatever this side of Heaven or Hell we're on, so to say."
"Uh huh."
"Uh huh. Now stand still. I could afford to give this old wand a bit of FINE TUNING!" Li-Ming lightly tossed the source up into the air, then with swift savagery snatched it as it came down and smashed it against the smaller orb floating just above the swell of the wand. Arcane energy blasted from the source toward Sylvanas. She stared it down, stone-faced.
Chromie backpedalled, stumbled, picked herself up, and backpedalled again. "Oh hey, would you look at the time. It's half past—"
"NOPE!" Sylvanas snatched her by the back of the collar just as Chromie whirled around and bodily hauled her front and center. Muscles and sinew bunching cordlike across her arm, the Banshee Queen flung the gnome as hard as she could at Li-Ming. Lo and behold, the gnomish missile struck true, hitting the wizard square in the face.
Tassadar couldn't react quick enough to throw up a shield around her. The sudden force knocked the projection of the beam skyward into the mishmash of heaven and hell. It also brought Li-Ming's hands up to catch Chromie and throw her aside, in that instant forgetting about the source and the wand.
The result was an explosive, arcanic dome that rocked the battlefield. When the energy dissipated and Tassadar slipped back into reality from the Void, there was no sign to be had of Sylvanas, Chromie or Li-Ming. He sighed and shook his head. "Ah, young one, you never cease to amaze me. When will you ever learn?"
Somewhere behind him, Beleth had tossed his horned head back, roaring laughter. "YES! YES! BRUTALIZE THEM!"
"HAVE FAITH, MY WARRIORS!" Illarian hailed. "HOPE YET REMAINS!" He managed to sound resolute in his conviction, but even he doubted, deep down, if luck would be on his side for very long.
A minute later, the three of them awoke in the Hall of Storms, all lying flat on their backs. Somewhere, the fight was still going on. Somewhere, the Butcher roared "FRESH MEAT!" and Sonya responded in kind with her barbaric yodel.
Li-Ming blew hair from her face. "Well. That was…totally unexpected." She glanced at Sylvanas. "You know you're going to get penalized by the Board again, right?"
"Don't care," said Sylvanas, whose head was turned away to glare at Chromie. "That was worth it."
Chromie shrugged, nonchalant. "Meh, it's okay. I'm going to get my revenge, anyway. I've all the time in the world to correct my calculations and close any loopholes I find. Trust me, I know the perfect time and place to get the jump on you."
"Good luck with that," Sylvanas sniffed. "I don't sleep."
Chromie giggled. "That's never stopped me before."
"Then you know what happens after the Northrend campaign, don't you?"
The color in Chromie's face dulled, the smile replaced with a frown. "…Oh." She looked down the length of her body, past the hands clasped on her lap to her feet. "Oh, that's…That's…Oh." She trailed off in a tiny, defeated voice.
Sylvanas closed her eyes and smirked, enjoying the sun.