Once You Go Black
6/15, alternate timeline
Sintharia considered the nature of her lord. Neltharion was mighty, brilliant, and dedicated. His will was law and his wisdom unquestionable… but should it be? What if he was wrong about something? She knew he regretted accepting the burden of becoming Earth Warder from the titans; that meant he’d already made at least one mistake.
She felt so naughty, picking apart her lord’s opinions. Now that she thought about it, he was wrong about quite a lot. There were so many things he didn’t know. He was the mightiest and most intelligent dragon of all time, but could he be even greater with her help? She wanted to offer suggestions. She wanted to help him, but it was… scary. She was afraid of him, now that she saw him in any light but the one he wanted to be seen in. The way that every black dragon looked at him.
Had he done something to them? She knew he studied shadow magic, but that was just to make him more able to counter the old gods if they ever escaped their bonds. Right? Then… then why did her children all look and act the same when they left his presence? Why hadn’t she thought to speak to any of her friends in the other Flights in… decades now, at least. Centuries for most of them.
She felt her blood run cold. What was wrong with her? Why was she afraid of her Aspect? She loved him. She always had. She always would. He had never laid a hand upon her.
He’d never had to, Sintharia realized. She’d never questioned him, not since long before she’d become his consort.
••••••••••
Aerith was rather disappointed when her next “free capture” was a mere petty officer in the Kirin Tor’s armies. She, Liandra, and Caroud had spent all the prior day skirmishing with blue dragonspawn, and likely would spend this day doing the same, but the first person she’d made skin to skin contact with was Serrah, the Quartermaster.
What made it worst was that Aerith was already on excellent terms with Serrah. Prompted by her quest log, her small raiding party had kept an eye out for edible berries and nuts to help supplement provisions. Conjured food was all well and good, but making it tasty was mana intensive and they were deep enough behind enemy lines to make a few jars of fresh frostberry jam into quite a luxury. It made their team very popular in the small magically cloaked military camp.
She hadn’t decided how to make use of the Oil of Ecstasy she’d gotten for that mission yet; a selfish and impractical part of her wanted to have Caroud use it so he’d be better in bed, but she was sure it could be put to better use than that. At the worst, there were some very rich and either unscrupulous or romantic types who would pay quite a lot for it.
Serrah was a mage, at least, and a combat trained military mage at that. The problem was that she was obligated to stay right here on this island in a vital non-combat role for the foreseeable future. Aerith had a few more missions to do here, though unfortunately no low hanging fruit. Four military actions against high profile targets and a more general mission that would come naturally if she kept succeeding in daring raids. Well, it seemed she was here for the long haul.
Defeat Malygos the SpellweaverReward: instant capture of KyrygosaPatron: Aluneth
Lead a successful assault on The NexusReward: Target tracker app added to amuletPatron: Copy of Keristrasza
Lead a successful assault on The OculusReward: Blue dragon transformation added to amuletsPatron: all natural blue dragons in all timelines will retroactively gain the sex and sexual habits prescribed by Malygosa.
Eliminate Saragosa, Consort of Malygos Reward: Disguises added to amuletsPatron: Brazzy’s Gnomish Pleasure Device
Become an exalted hero of the Kirin TorReward: Remote Access to Arcane Sanctum building in primary timelinePatron: Once, Erich Bismark may declare any one person to be the leader of the Kirin Tor. They will be accepted and obeyed without complaint initially, but mismanagement will erode their authority.
••••••••••
Neltharion managed the goblin craftsmen as they worked. He had given them the designs himself, for over a dozen wafer thin golden elementium disks inscribed with runes of power. Inert, for now, as they would be until they could be fused together and empowered. The runes were meant to contain and control energy, not gather it. The Dragon Soul was to be, in essence, a battery. An empty well of power that could swallow up all the world. When it was ready, anyway.
He rested in a large chair, allowing the weight of the world to rest upon his shoulders. It was always just heavy enough to strain his body, making it uncomfortable to move. As he’d grown stronger, it had grown alongside him, ensuring that every movement was a workout. It eased and intensified on its own, allowing his muscles to rest, and vanished entirely when he was in danger. It was a constant, grinding, exhausting pressure. A torturous burden placed upon him, disguised as a gift.
His consort, Sintharia, entered his workshop nervously. She should not do so. He had commanded her to leave him alone when he was working here. He drove a spike of shame into her heart as he moved to intercept her near the door, and followed it with distaste for the goblins and anxiety that she might interfere with his work.
“What is it, my heart?“ he asked her gently, taking her hand and leading her out of the lab. “I know you wouldn’t interrupt if it wasn’t serious, but we are at a delicate point in the process.” He meant what he said. Sintharia was a good mate. Obedient, trusting, intelligent, useful. She would bear him strong eggs who would serve him well in turn. She was much less irritating to interact with than most, requiring only a few comforting words to be happy.
“I found this, and I thought you would like to study it.” She pulled out a small box as she spoke in a small voice, “it seemed to be very powerful and I knew you were making a special necklace.”
The box opened, revealing a beautiful golden ring. Neltharion slipped it on without thinking, even as his intuition began screaming warnings.
No. No. Danger. Trap. Kill her. Destroy it. Destroy your hand. Kill yourself.
The Earth Warder grabbed his consort by the neck and smashed her against the stone wall with enough force to kill a troll instantly. “What have you done?” He asked her in a smooth, level voice, his eyes boring into her.
“I didn’t do anything.” She swore, her eyes darting around in terror. She felt honest, but…
LIAR. LIAR. SHE HAS BEEN TAKEN FROM YOU. KILL HER AND MOVE ON. YOU MIGHT BE SAVED IF YOU CAN STOP IT.
Neltharion stared into her eyes as he probed her mind, trying to find any hint of malice or disloyalty. Any excuse to follow through with his hunch. He found nothing but fear and a Hope born of absolute, fanatical trust. Nothing to make him think of her as anything but honest, at least until ten seconds later when she vanished from his sight.
She had escaped him. She had betrayed him and escaped somehow. He did not know what trouble she might cause, but he knew she could not speak his secrets. He’d installed safeguards against such things in all who had ever stepped foot in his laboratories.
He put her from his mind. He’d kill her or break her later, now he needed to study this ring. It was dangerous. Very dangerous. He could tell that much just from his intuition.
••••••••••
Aerith spent the next several days taking samples of the local flora and fauna, dragging the corpses of drakes back to the camp, assassinating Azure officers, and releasing prisoners. Officially Caroud was the leader of this team, but that was only on paper. He wasn’t very sociable, so she’d convinced him to let her serve as the squad’s main point of contact.
When one of the prisoners she released turned out to be Keristrasza, daughter of Alexstrasza and peer to even Onyxia’s true self, Aerith had been ecstatic. She was a powerful ally indeed, even if she’d already proven fallible enough to be captured once. When she proposed a strategy to eliminate Saragosa, one of Aerith’s targets, everything seemed to be going marvelously.
The daughter of Deathwing tried to stay close to the daughter of Alexstrasza and avoid human contact. She was starting to suspect that there was some connection between her master’s Retinue and her own mysterious captures. After all, both of her “strokes of luck” so far had been part of organizations that he had quite thoroughly dominated in their own world. They had also been the first people, other than Caroud, she had come into physical contact with on those days.
She made a conscious effort to make physical contact with Keri each morning as early as possible. She would have attempted seduction so she could start in the same bed each morning, but neither Keristrasza nor Raelorasz, the two strongest red dragons present, were interested in a romantic tryst with Aerith according to the Red String. Of course, once she started looking she noticed that Corastrasza, the field commander of the red drakes, was already interested in her romantically.
Aerith resolved to pursue that once she was finished working closely with Keristrasza. Cora could no doubt provide her with the troops she’d need to finish the rest of her missions here, with the possible exception of killing Malygos. That meant extracting herself from Caroud romantically, preferably without upsetting him. He was still useful even if Aerith intended to trade up. She encouraged Liandrin to pursue him, which the druidess was thankfully amenable to. Good, that girl liked Caroud, he’d be willing to stay if it meant staying close to her, and it freed up Aerith’s evenings. She wasn’t so desperate for sex that she’d go mad sleeping alone a few nights.
••••••••••
Neltharion isolated the affected parts of his mind, studying the ring in depth. Sintharia had been a fool or a traitor, but she’d been correct too. This ring contained subtle and powerful enchantments that would bind someone to a preconfigured set of principles. It was indeed an artifact worth investigating, and something he thought he could integrate into the dragon soul. As things currently stood, it would require time and careful manipulation to alter the will of someone invested into it; simply bludgeoning them into compliance would be simple enough, but not altering their mind.
He kept his mind shielded and pruned, minimizing the threat it posed to him, though he did occasionally reflect that he should probably be putting more thought into getting it off and less thought into reverse engineering it. Those thoughts came less and less as the week passed, as did his flashes of intuition.
On the eighth day, he finished adjusting one of the prototypes he’d made for the Dragon soul, made with only one of the golden wafers, and had his oh so trusting flight begin pouring fragments of their souls into it. They would be ready to declare their fealty to the master by the time he arrived, if Neltharion primed them properly, and the Black Soul would be a powerful talisman in its own right.
So… how to convince the other flights to do the same?
••••••••••
The plan to lure out and assassinate Saragosa had been inspired. The somewhat improvised plan to ambush a demigod of arcane magic by baiting him with the burning corpse of his lover was… less so. Swarming him with nearly a hundred drakes was not necessarily doomed from the start, but the chances of taking him out like that had never been high. If they had had one or two more dragons in Keri’s weight class they might have been able to take him down before his backup arrived. As things stood, the Red flight only managed to injure him at the cost of Keristrasza being dragged away. From what he said, he intended for her to replace his freshly killed consort.
On a positive note, Malygos’s injury was bad enough that he’d be avoiding anything too strenuous for at least a week. Further, the fact that Keristrasza was clearly a prisoner instead of being dead meant that Aerith could try to mount a rescue mission. Of course, she needed more backup. Thankfully, killing Saragosa meant unlocking the disguise function on her amulet.
While Caroud and Liandra gathered allies inland, Aerith intended to go undercover as an azure mage and see if she could find any more traitors or prisoners inside. Hopefully a solo prison break would count as a successful assault, and a bit of faulty information gathering could allow her to get the real prize authorized: an assault on the Oculus while Malygos was still disabled. Blue wasn’t really her color, but any draconic form would be an improvement over a mere human. She didn’t see what Lividia saw in them.
••••••••••
And with that, this repost is all caught up. Slightly longer intervals between updates, AWAY.
So, I’m curious. The last poll has a lot of interest in carrying forward reality shifts and keeping girls in our harem as tag alongs. Please let me know if I forgot any reality shifts or “core” waifus you think should be in the running.https://strawpoll.com/e2narKoAAgBAndhttps://strawpoll.com/kogjkaVLPZ6