The Culling Part 2

6/13 night

The Road Hogs were causing the blockade some distinct issues. The centaur were fast, but not when compared to the motorcycle riding quillboar. It turned into a stalemate quickly, as the quillboar could quite literally ride circles around the centaur. Of course, they couldn’t do much more than distract them, as their equipment didn’t take advantage of their superior speed. Handguns are all well and good, but the centaur had a substantial number of healers. If an attack didn’t kill them almost immediately, it might as well not have not happened.

The battlefield was chaos, but in a battle of attrition the advantage went to the centaur. The motorcycles relied on relatively smooth terrain, and Zaetar’s disciples were using what little vital energy could be found in the sands to grow small vines that would serve as tripping hazards. Lunara was agile enough to catch up with the enemy if they weren’t moving in a straight line, though it tended to be a long chase, and both Gina and Varian could manage something similar if the pig-men got close enough to them to use their charge ability. Finally, mountain giants could taunt them, which frequently ended up causing collisions.

It was slow. It was grinding. In the end, it was inevitable that my retinue would win.

••••••••••

“Locate, isolate, and kill the one known as Netorarian at all costs. Nothing else matters. Anyone else is replaceable.”Kazakusan reached into the portal he kept on his stomach and pulled out a stone tablet. “Nefarian had better appreciate this.” He grumbled before he began chanting the activation incantation. This tablet would take years to recharge.As he chanted, the sands of the desert which constantly blew into the streets of Gadgetzan quivered and congealed, becoming huge locusts the size of a horse. A wave of energy flowed out, creating hundreds of the behemoth insects. “Go! Go forth and devour the one known as Netorarian, and any who would defend him!”

Kazakus considered his options. He doubted that anyone that Nefarian thought was a threat would go down to just that. As such, he stowed the tablet and pulled out a collection of jet black potions, which he poured out on the ground. The liquid bubbled and expanded into large purple masses of caustic liquid. Once their glowing eyes formed, Kazakus mentally imprinted a vision of their target upon them and sent them away.

With a sigh, Kazakus pulled out the set of Canopic jars.

••••••••••

Once we took down Han’Cho, the goons' morale broke. They kept fighting to some degree, but always to cover a retreat. I called my spirit of vengeance to take advantage of the pile of corpses, though the results were mixed. Many of the spirits of the goons had been captured by Nefarian, and so when they were animated they didn’t come out on my side of the conflict. It substantially reduced the usefulness of my ultimate ability, but not to the point of uselessness.

I was considering where to go next when the thunder of wings started, and it didn’t take long before the locusts started dive bombing me. I had been bowled over and mauled before I properly understood what was going on, and unfortunately my demons were busy chasing down the goons. I’d already lost huge chunks out of my arms and legs by the time Lividia could blast the big bugs off of me. I turned myself invisible while I healed myself and regenerated, so I’m afraid my dragon girlfriend took the brunt of that first wave.

I mean it when I say first wave, too. What had been an assault was reversed into a siege, with me as the defender. Before Lividia and I finished off the locusts, my Dommes were being assaulted by skeletal beings made of lumpy white wax that simply refused to die. They were mostly immune to mental influence, and would reform in seconds if they were destroyed with physical force. Polymorph worked a bit better, preventing their reformation, but certainly ate up much more mana than just killing them would have.

The buzzing sound in my ears hummed as the entire city reoriented towards me, seeking to kill me.

“No,” I muttered when I finally had a moment to rest behind a wall of Chargers. “They aren’t trying to kill me. They are trying to wear me down.” I took a few moments to drink a few potions, topping myself up on buffs. “Man, they are going to be pissed if they kill me and it doesn’t take.”

•••••••••••

Rubi watched the security cams from her bunker; it was all she could do. Things had been getting bad over the last several days, quickly enough that she and her husband, Scoot, had decided to go dark and silent. The kids were bored and the food that they had left was pretty much just dried beans, but they were safe.

“Scoot, unless you’re gonna get that thing up and running in the next hour or so, you should probably take a look at this.” Rubi wouldn’t normally interrupt her husband while he was working, especially not on a dimensional ripper intended to get them out of this hellhole, but she wanted confirmation of what she was seeing.

“Do those look like green meteors to you?”

“Yeah, what about em?”

“Well they’re getting up and punching people.”

“Anyone we know?”

“Jerry earlier.”

“Fuck Jerry. I'm more worried about the dragons there.” The two of them watched as a pair of huge black dragons ambushed a red one. All three were immolating the city, so the couple largely didn’t care who won in true goblin fashion. “They’re way too close to the house.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, right Scoot?” Rubi asked testily. “The bunker YOU designed will protect us long enough for you to finish building the teleport pad that, again, YOU designed, RIGHT SCOOT?”

“Course it will, under normal circumstances, but just look! Three more dragons just showed up, all in different colors! Not to mention that weird red snake thing.”

“Most dragons aren’t too bad if you aren’t on their turf.” Rubi assured her partner, mostly for the sake of the kids. “We’ll be fine as long as they don’t care about us in particular.”

“Yeah, but with all due respect for the dragons, that snake thing seems like it’s winning.”

••••••••••

Hakkar the Soulflayer drank deeply of the blood and death in this city. Her new lord’s command was to deny the enemy any servants from the people of Gadgetzan, and to use the power harvested here to strike down his greatest foe. Erich Bismark’s forces were immune to poison, and thus her blood plague didn’t harm them, but the swirling mass of souls were worth the effort regardless. This was the first task she had ever done as the servant of another, but it was a promising start.

Even when the aspects came upon her, Hakkar was able to fight on an equal footing. Back in Zul’Gurub, five Loa were chained in her service, feeding her energy through their priests. Combined with the incredible feast that lay before her, Hakkar was able to stand against the likes of Alexstrasza, Ysera, and Malygos. Likely she would have lost if she’d been expected to fight alone, but that wasn’t a concern. She was backed by the willing sacrifices that flooded the streets to fight Bismark’s forces, and the cowering masses who died in their homes as the blood plague ravaged them.

Perhaps most important, however, was the quiet support of one Human Paladin. In event of Hakkar’s death, she would be resurrected the moment that the Aspects moved on. She would be expected to flee then, but servants didn’t get to question their masters. She hadn’t expected to so quickly fall into the role of slave, but she found that she wanted to be the kind of servant she had always craved. Obedient, unquestioning, and powerful.

••••••••••

While my heavy hitters converged upon Hakkar and fought off the rain of infernals, I was treated to a rematch with Nefarian. My enemy wasn’t pulling any attention diverting schemes today, unless you count the armies he brought along to run interference while he fought me. I’ll be honest, I was not doing great. If I’d been fresh I might have been a match for him, but he’d very carefully held back until I was vulnerable. I might have tried a death or glory attack with a barrage of arcane missiles, but I concluded that I needed to go with another strategy that I’d thought of, but had been hoping to avoid.

I traded out most of my magic gear from my inventory, freeing up space for several pieces of company swag. “Aelthalyste. I’m initiating operation honeypot. Make the changes.” In that moment, as I took on my Elyssa persona, I temporarily became a bisexual nymphomaniac as I played a chime for Nefarian. A temptress bell, one of many minor items Talaada had acquired in the last day of accelerated minor missions.

I edited the next several minutes out of my memory afterwards, so I can’t tell you details, but needless to say I kept him distracted until I could inject him with paralytic poison. From there, I clapped on a tempest bracelet and dragged him through a portal into my own demiplane. I don’t know how he escaped; one minute I was getting ready to shove in a buttplug to force a love confession the moment he could move, and the next moment he lashed out with a claw and took my head clean off. When I was resurrected later, I was informed that somehow he’d flown right out of the portal we’d come in with.

••••••••••

3 Stage Bossfight triggered! 2nd charge used.Partial loss: You may no longer engage your rival in direct combat until 6/20. In addition, you have suffered one additional penalty.