Plans Askew

5/11 noon

I used Keryn as my teleport point. She was dead asleep. I assumed she needed the rest; she was the secret agent here. Lividia and I walked down to the main dining room, where I found Irma sitting alone working on several sheets of paper. “What’s that?”

She glanced up and smiled. “Oh, Lord Bismark. I was considering patrol schedules. The Lions are a bit unbalanced. The entire organization seems to primarily consist of lightly armored skirmishers, and we appear to be undermanned.” She lowered her voice and leaned in close to me, “I am writing up a proposal for Vanessa to find some reasonable excuse to reinforce our position with mages from Stone Cairn Lake.” She looked up at me, quite satisfied with herself.

“Great idea. I haven’t really considered them as under my command yet, but I guess they are.” I realized that while she needed to act in a supportive and submissive role, none of her commands actually included approval seeking. That was actually really good. She’d tirelessly work to my benefit and derive tremendous satisfaction from doing it, but she didn’t actually require any input from me.

She handed me some water and a muffin, then cleaned and perfumed me and Lividia with minor spells. She seemed satisfied for the moment, but kept her eyes on me. Ok. So she definitely preferred the little tasks directly for me personally, but she was still just acting without any input from me. “Is there anything else I can assist with?”

Lividia cut in first. “Gathering minions is an excellent start, but our king is planning on toppling a great threat to us.”

I went ahead and asked a rather awkward, but relevant, question. “Are you a virgin?”

“I am afraid not, sir, assuming you mean sexually. My blood has never been used to power a ritual, if that is what you are referring to.”

“What? Uh. No. I meant the sex thing.”

“Apologies. Had I known you would require it I would have not given my virginity to a fellow student at the academy. It was not a fulfilling experience.” Communication talent told me she was mostly joking. Mostly.

“That’s fine. Though weird you mention rituals. I am working out a ritual and one thing I can do to empower it is take someone’s virginity.”

“Does anal virginity count?” She asked like she was suggesting a substitution in a recipe. Which I suppose she was. I checked with the rod just in case; apparently it did not.

“No. Afraid not.”

“Shall I put out a request? I’m sure we can find a virgin somewhere.”

“I’ll be keeping it within the retinue for now.” Damn. I’d worked out a ritual, and for it to work I absolutely needed one popped cherry unless I wanted to sacrifice my Bottle of Consent or Lethe waters. I strongly suspected that Talaada would qualify, but I had standards and until she took on a mortal form she didn’t meet them. I’d just need to ask around. I thought through the people I hadn’t personally fucked already.

Eliza had been happily married to a man, Tony and Mezzo were dudes, and Eva had two biological grandchildren. Vanessa didn’t seem the type to still be a virgin unless her dad was an absolutely insane shotgun father, and besides she was in enemy territory. Keryn also didn’t seem like someone who would be disinterested in sex, and she was older, so I assumed no virginity there. Auffrey and Yanca seemed like the best bets; otherwise I’d be holding off until Talaada was ready.

For now, what I really needed was a space cleared out and set up for the purpose. The world of Azeroth was just a bit too dangerous for me to risk doing an elaborate two hour ritual in the wilderness where I might be interrupted or spied on. Once again I lamented my lack of proper base. Abby’s shack was absolutely not big enough, nor was Eva’s house. I’d burnt down the Mistmantle Estate. I was junior enough among the warlocks that they would, at minimum, demand to know what I was doing. The Elerian estate was a maybe if they had a cellar, but I’d need to either work around their schedule or capture them. This could be a rite of the cult of Love, if they actually built themselves a complex. Maybe I could find an old abandoned building and use that? Or Vanessa might be able to bullshit me a work space from the Defias? It was irritating to realize that many of my options seemed like they would delay me by a few days.

Ah well. Maybe not today after all.

••••••••••

Zorba weighed the bar of fel iron in one hand, tapped it with a hammer, and sighed. “Shit metal. Impure.”

Zelena bent down to look; the faintly luminous green metal looked normal to her. “How so? Did Bavira give us a bad batch? Can you prove it?”

“Mmmmm. No. Normal. Bad but not bad. Complain? Punish us.” The gan’arg smith sounded exasperated but resigned. That absolute bitch. Zelena absolutely believed that Sayaad slut knew exactly how much she could allow quality to slip before it would endanger her.

“Well I suppose you will have to make do. Make it work and I’ll see to it you are rewarded. Fail me and I’ll make sure you’re punished at least as much as I am. Understand?” She had worked quite a lot on the “friendly threat” tone she was using right now. She was proud of it. The little smith nodded without showing any emotion at all. She wished she could believe he was scared dumb, but she doubted it.

Masking her disappointment, she turned and called one of her steeds. Char had been one of the first she’d chosen to hand over, a solid middle of the road felsteed she would never put to stud, but who took well to domination and had an acceptable physique. He came to stand next to Zorba silently, awaiting measurement.

The process hadn’t been overly complex. Pick the steeds, get them equipped, ensure they are properly conditioned to submit to riders. She’d done most of the real work long before now. She was being robbed. Robbed of the opportunity to give her best work to champions of the legion, mighty steeds that would die and be reborn a thousand times, all so that Nozara could have slightly more mobile felguards the next time she was chosen to aid an invasion.

She’d knife Bavira or even Nozara in a heartbeat if doing so would change anything. They should be more like Zorba. Silent, practical, skilled, and both fearless and obedient. The Burning Legion should all be like that, working together for their greater goal, providing the best that they could with what they were given. Destroying all that stood in the way of the Dark Titan’s goals by directing every iota of force outward, at the enemy.

But… they weren’t. She tried, oh how she tried, to banish the thought. She wanted to be a good legionnaire. She wanted to believe her situation was unique, or at least unusual. But the legion was broken. She couldn’t fix it. Nothing she could contribute would change anything. It hurt her, deep in her soul, to realize that she was on the losing side. In a doomed legion.She crossed her arms and watched her excellent new minion work on her faithful steed. Watched a microcosm of what should be. She kept the anguish from her face pretty well, she thought.

••••••••••

Darcell wasn’t very experienced, but she could definitely get into a medical tent. All she had to do was grab a dozen of the small peacebloom potions she’d helped gather ingredients for, and pretend to be delivering them. It might be expensive to leave them behind, but Erich had said he wanted her to steal magical equipment. She was sure that would recoup his losses.There was apparently an ongoing riot in the Stockades; good for them. The guards were trying to keep it quiet, but a lot of their people were getting injured; they had even brought in soldiers for a while before deciding to just starve the inmates out.

She was pointed at their clinic, and swept her eyes around until she saw the pile of equipment stripped off of the injured. She waited until she heard a loud noise, then entered stealth to sneak over. She had absolutely no idea what was enchanted and what wasn’t, so she just grabbed things to put in the inventory until the mission was marked as completed.

She looked over at the barricade, behind which her brothers were being held and starved to death. There were small holes in it, and the guards attention was on the other barricade erected by those inside. She could help. She would help. Her comrades were trapped; she’d seen this very situation once before.

Moving slowly until she was noticed, Darcell got close to the barricade. Once they saw her she threw herself over the barricade and sprinted in. “The Brotherhood shall prevail!”