Capítulo 99: Finishing up the To-Do List
5/14 late afternoon
I scampered over to the three slaves; I was the chooser dragon, and nobody in this clan going to stop me in Stitches' direct line of sight. "Hey. You want out? I can make that happen."
The three humans, one woman and two men stared at me with hollow eyes. One of the men seemed to be in slightly better shape, and decided to speak up. "What will it cost us?"
"You will need to pledge loyalty to me, on a trial basis if you would prefer. The pledge is simple. You tell me you love me, and mean it." I was slightly surprised to see Lillibeth's necklace appear around his neck, until I remembered that right now there was no one in my apartment that was captured and wearing a necklace. I'd need to open a door myself to let her back in. Bit of a mistake, but it worked out this time.
"I… uh… love you? Yeah, sure man. After the shit I've seen, I'll say I love you." He seemed to be getting more confident as he said it again. "I love you." That one was the ticket. The guy seemed pretty sharp, so I doubt that Lillibeth would have been able to pressure him if I wasn't in the midst of throwing him a lifeline. As he seemed to shed years of hard life and stress, the other two stared in wonder. The other guy snapped out his own "I love you!" desperately. He repeated like a mantra as Lillibeth's snuck into his body, and was captured quickly.
The woman stared wide eyed at me, and when Lillibeth's necklace appeared around her neck she quietly mumbled the words. She broke down in tears at the hope of freedom, and I felt like an asshole for not getting these three out sooner. I had Em pick them up and send them, sans chains, to Talaada. She was currently at the compound, and I figured that of any safe place I had to send people, the draenei would be most likely to feed and clean them without asking too many awkward questions.
••••••••••
Lividia had never been in court before. She found she didn't love it. She presented herself as her mother's niece; Lividia Prestor seemed like a good name. Mother had been quite annoyed when she'd found out, but who cared? Lividia only answered to her king, and now so did mother; they were equals, with Lividia slightly superior, at least in the only way that mattered.
High society was so *boring.* They all stood around eating their small sandwiches and drinking their small drinks and being polite to one another. Is this what mother had decided was worth turning into a human over? How silly. Humans weren't this. Humans were a scrabbling mass of angry yelling people trying to one up one another and get every edge they could until they died. That's what made them great.
Erich's way of controlling people was so much better. Dominate their will, then turn their focus towards service in your name. Simple, clean, elegant. Of course, her king was also good at talking. She recognized why she was kept quiet while he spoke to people; he had the patience necessary to talk people into things, which Lividia didn't have and honestly didn't want. If her king demanded it she would learn how to play nice, but she'd much rather simply rule over those who knew their place. Perhaps that was why mother had hidden so many dragonspawn here? Lividia still needed to learn how to make those.
She received an invitation from her king to come with him on an excursion. She turned and walked away from the idiot who had been talking at her. After the eighth man dressed in brightly colored clothing who had nothing to say except that he had money and followed orders adequately during war time, she had stopped listening. They enjoyed admiring her, and she liked being admired, but she didn't actually care what they were trying to say to her. She walked until they weren't following her anymore, and returned to the side of her king.
••••••••••
I went in to have a nice chat with Monze. She wasn't in a good mood; she refused to speak to me, and repeatedly attempted to kill me. I assume; she kept turning in my direction and freezing, and she picked up a chair once then dropped it as her hands seized up before she could swing it at me. Profanity was employed very creatively.
"Look, this will go better for you if you just do what I say and accept that I am your chief now. I'm offering you power and honor as one of the first orcs in my service, I was really quite impressed with your prowess, but if you're just going to fight me every step of the way this will be a lot harder on you." She really wasn't reacting well. There was a lot of demands that I do everything from release her to fight her, but I just didn't feel like it. Eventually, to prove a point, I did knock her to the ground with a nonlethal smite, then stepped on her chest with one foot, not putting my full weight into it. She couldn't figure out how to knock me off without potentially hurting me, so she was effectively pinned.
"I hope we can be allies. But until you declare your love for me or swear an oath of loyalty and mean it, you're not going anywhere. When you decide you're up for it, I have plenty of uses for a strong warrior like you." As Marge and Lividia arrived, I let Monze get up and checked my amulet. This conversation had knocked 3 hours off of Monze's ETE, which wasn't much but might accumulate with repeated attempts.
I was pretty happy with the last couple days worth of new recruits. A goblin named Gilnid that I guessed was from the Defias, those three human prisoners, Hamhock, another Draenei in the swamp, Althea Blacklock of the Night Watch, councilman Millstipe of Darkshire, Caledra Dawnbreeze, two dragonspawn, and Onyxia. Oh. I just got a popup for Nozara as well. My retinue was expanding rapidly and I was loving it. From the looks of it, Melaar had also initiated two more draenei into dragonhood.
"Alright. Doris, come out." Marge got that misty eyed look and then shifted around, toughening up and summoning a suit of fine leather armor from my inventory. I vaguely wondered if this was the in-world version of the Defias Leather Armor set, a rather good heavily enchanted suit of armor for low level rogues. If so, I'd need to look into getting additional sets made or collected for Darcell and Keryn.
"So. We have a target. A mage by the name of Morganth. He lives in a tower in eastern Redridge and I have reason to believe he's fairly dangerous in a fight. I need him dead, driven off, or captured. I'm not picky, as long as he is no longer operating in Redridge by the end of the process. I want to come with you while you do your initial scouting mission. I'll back you up as well as I can, and I'll try to learn what you can teach."
She sighed. "Alright. But I'll be real cautious if I'm dealing with an amateur tagalong."
"I'm not a master or anything but I think I can stay quiet. And Lividia will be flying high, mostly out of sight." Lividia shrugged at that, accepting it as better than being excluded.
We made our way out through Lakeshire fairly easily, and waited until we were out of sight to turn ourselves into dragons. The Blackrock orcs would assume we were allies, as likely as not, so we didn't gain too much altitude until we had passed Stonewatch keep. With a high vantage point and draconic vision, it wasn't too hard to pick out the one intact tower on the east side of the lake. We made our way over towards the tower, just seeing how close we could get. Doris returned to her human form, seeing as she was far more effective at fighting on two legs. Lividia and I took advantage of our tiny sizes to improve our stealth.
Doris led the approach; the tower had an encampment built around its base, absolutely full of pale furred gnolls. Interspersed among the large hyena-men were strange blue hounds that seemed content to laze about for the most part. Notably, every single gnoll here seemed to have an amulet.
"If we can't get to Morganth today, I am looking to get" I checked my quest log, "eleven of those amulets."
Doris gave me a mildly irritated look. "Are we changing the mission objective?"
"More adding a secondary one. Any amulets you can get your hands on will be good progress."
"Fine. I'll keep an eye out for targets of opportunity."
I carefully watched Doris from the shadows, in stealth myself, while Lividia circled far enough overhead to be mistaken for a dark colored bird. As promised, she circled the tower, taking mental notes about the terrain and keeping an eye out for isolated gnolls.
It was a thing of beauty when she did catch them out of the line of sight of any of their fellows. She would burst from the shadows, choke them, and stab them repeatedly with her sword until they stopped struggling; I helped in my own way by cursing them with weakness to make the job easier. Then, at my orders, she would send them to Abby and Eliza. No muss, no fuss, from the start of the attack to the end of cleanup took around thirty seconds.
We did a full circuit of the tower and managed to kill six of the gnolls, incidentally getting my number of amulets up to 15 in very short order. Whatever these amulets were for, Morganth felt that the gnolls he kept closest to him should have them.
We tried to lure away the gnolls, but they were starting to notice their shrinking numbers. The hounds went looking, and found the bloody ground. Of course, then I found them. I was not nearly as efficient as Doris, but I was around the same size as these strange dogs and only attacked when I could have a full power word: shield active. That gave me the opportunity to recklessly go to town on these bastards, though they managed to surprise me by draining my mana while I ripped them apart. It was a new and unpleasant experience; all of the headache and lack of focus of casting a spell without the glorious rush of power that comes with actually casting a spell. I didn't even know what happened at first until I checked my amulet and saw my mana was low, even though I'd only cast power word shield during the fight.
I sent the bodies along, and hung back for a bit, trying to avoid drawing attention until my mana was full again and letting Martial Talent replay the fight in my head. Doris seemed nervous around the dogs; communication and martial talent talked it over and proposed that she might be overly specialized in fighting humanoids. If it has two arms, two legs, a head, walked upright and had a pulse, Doris could fight it. Magic dogs, on the other hand, weren't her cup of tea.
It wasn't lost on me that we hadn't actually gotten into the tower itself, we were just circling it and trying to figure out how to slip past modestly intelligent guards that had an excellent sense of smell. Of course, we might also just be able to overwhelm the defenses. I proposed testing the waters to Doris, and she agreed to my idea.
The gnolls were quite surprised when a small collection of shoddily reanimated undead charged the tower. Mostly gnolls; Abbie had informed me that Eliza had been having a bit of trouble making undead that wouldn't rapidly deteriorate, but they were reasonably functional in the first 24 hours of their creation. As such, some rather unimpressive shambling zombies and a few much more agile zombies from today's haul. I chuckled when I saw them; a few of the gnolls had turned into hot dog-girls upon being transformed into undead. Not my cup of tea, especially when they were also about as smart as the average dog, but good to see that the reality warp was committed to the bit.
Doris and I tried to sneak up on the enemy backline, and were rewarded with satisfying crunches as we killed two more gnolls. We sent the bodies along for processing, and needed three more amulets. A few smites helped our ill fated zombies, at least until the front gates of the tower opened and a few dozen of the hounds flooded out; I buggered off at that point, flying full speed over the lake. Doris apparently stuck around after vanishing in a cloud of smoke, mostly so she could gather up the last few amulets from the dead and observe how long the guards stayed on high alert. I, in contrast, just enjoyed my new goodie bag.
Honestly neither the Seal of Joy nor the Couples Fruit were all that exciting as rewards; the real rewards were a credit and a couple new missions. The seal of joy didn't last very long, but I might be able to use it to accelerate capture of someone or get someone to be more cooperative in general. I'd need to be a bit creative to get a lot of use out of it; the best idea I had was definitely to get a prisoner to go along with some kind of deal.
The couples fruit would be great if I felt like playing cupid, or it might work as a love potion to facilitate capture. I was thinking if I split it with someone on purpose it might affect me as a self-inflicted effect, but if I could accelerate capture of Inquisitor Whitemane at the "cost" of getting embroiled into a month long emotionally charged sexual relationship with her, during a time when I'd probably also be spending a lot of time with her so she could teach me her magic, I'd be ok with that. If the fruit wasn't considered to be a self inflicted mental effect, so much the better.
Lividia and I flew high above Redridge, enjoying the sky for a bit, before it was time to return to Stormwind, once Doris confirmed she was safely back in the apartment writing her report. I fully intended to finish up with Bartleby today, and the Pig and Whistle had proven to be a great little tavern for some basic bookkeeping. I could get some dinner, go over my new missions, amend my plans for the next couple of days, and nail down what I would spend my credits on.
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