章 74: Dragon at Dawn
5/10 morning
We went down for breakfast after I cleaned the swamp muck off of both of us and our sheets; Talaada was clearly nervous around so many people. Especially non-Draenei. When I explained that she was a new recruit to the Dragon Raiders I was training, the Lions showed quite a bit more interest. I had to wave them off; she didn't even speak the human tongue. "She's overwhelmed. Go on, I'm sure you have work to do elsewhere."
Talaada ate ravenously; she was nervous at first, but once she started in on the goulash she couldn't stop herself until the bowl was empty. Twice, since I paid for another bowl. Looking at her as a dwarf, she was cute. On the young side, but not a child. My mind conjured the comparison to a young adult who just didn't have the money to move out yet. Total failure to launch due to lack of opportunities and resources.
While we ate, you know the drill. I looked over my reports. I only had Irma and Zelena in the process of being captured, and Irma would be finished this evening, so I definitely needed to start collaring more people. Ideally I should always be near, but not quite at, my limit.
Yanca ran to me and bowed, thanking me for the healing, and we chatted about nothing important while I inspected her. She'd been captured some time yesterday, and had grown into a proper Amazon. The version of her that she would have been if she'd been raised by a noble family to be a knight, instead of being a poor farm girl. She wasn't exactly a beauty queen, but she'd gained a few inches of height and her broken nose had straightened out.
https://imgur.com/a/3F1OE7f
It was really quite striking a difference compared to someone like Tessa or Auffrey, who had grown up with better nutrition. A shame I didn't really have the necklaces to spare for random rank and file soldiers. Turning every one of the Lions into their best selves would go a long way to making them more formidable. Not to mention defenses and eternal talent and all the other advantages of being in the retinue. At least they were getting full suits of armor made for them, though at the moment it appeared to mostly be helmets and breastplates.
I stopped musing after Yanca went back to her own food and got back to my app. Zelena was a demon, and while she wasn't the most powerful kind of demon she was certainly stronger than Mezzo. When she was ready, I intended to use her to capture more demons and feed me information. I don't think there are many double agents in the Burning Legion; it would end poorly for them. That meant that I didn't want any obediences designed to accelerate her capture. Hell, I wanted something that would make her a better Legionnaire.
Considering ways to better fulfill assigned tasks: moderate negative emotion reduction
There. A practical way for her to maintain her composure and a good habit to encourage in someone working in just about any field, either for me or for Warcraft Satan. It would have to do for now.
I took Talaada up to the room, and teleported back to Mary with her. According to my app, Lillibeth was already attached to someone, another Draenei by the looks of the name. Probably hanging out in the back of their heads, passively softening them up for when they met me.
Mary seemed hurt, her form flickering slightly as she floated along listlessly, so I healed her with the light as Talaada looked on with interest. "What happened to you?"
"Oh it was awful. They noticed my presence and drove me out with a strange crystal." Damn. At least some of the paranoid ones were on to us. Maybe I'd need to do a bit more to sell the majority of the community on this idea. For now though, I had a lesson to work on and had Mary keep watch.
I pulled out an amulet for Talaada. "This will allow you to take your next form towards perfection. Simply wear it, and I will do the rest." She trusted me, and after all I was wearing a necklace myself. I wasn't planning on going with subtlety with the Draenei's style, so she got a rather large chunky diamond necklace. It covered her collarbone and glittered in the light, making her near-white skin look dull grey.
Once she had it firmly in place, I used the app to turn her into a black dragon. The results were unexpected. For one she was nearly the size of a horse, almost as large as Drusilla had been. My concerns about cradle robbing faded quite a lot as I was confronted with a reminder of the ridiculous lifespan that Eredar had even before magical enhancement. For another, while she loosely looked like a black dragon she had a different coloration. Her stomach had a distinct lavender tint to it, shared by much of her body; the spines on her tail, her claws, strange gill-like markings along her neck, and the webbing of her wings all glowed faintly purple. She wasn't a black dragon. She was a Nether Drake.
I didn't remember the lore exactly, but given that Nether Drakes were found in Outland and normal dragons are from Azeroth, I assumed they were a mutation from exposure to fel magic just like the broken. A substantially less… well, ugly one. At least by my standards, the ones that mattered here. I'd need to test it to be sure, but I suspected that she'd become a fel-corrupted version of any species I turned her into, rather than disguising her as. Assuming one existed; I wasn't actually sure if humans could mutate like that. I knew orcs and elves could.
Lividia looked on with great interest. "Oh, much better. She's not quite right but it's a vast improvement, don't you think? So much better than those hideous ogres as well." Not a bad point. Ogres are great and all but if every broken I could capture could turn into a Nether dragon this big or larger, they were pretty much obsolete as a hit squad.
Going to RTS logic and the relative difficulty of recruitment, the question became whether a Nether Dragon was worth the three ogres I could capture with the same investment of time and resources. In a straight brawl probably not. In virtually every other conceivable situation though? Absolutely.
Compared to Ogres, dragons with the minds of Draenei would be much smarter, more coordinated, more mobile, more magically apt, more socially adept, slightly stronger, better tradesmen, better company, and once I got visages down they would be drastically more fuckable.
Ogres had only a few advantages: they were extremely easy to capture, at least the dumbest ones. They were currently more socially acceptable and "normal" than either dragons or Eredar, at least among the Horde. Uh… they also had a fortified base camp near someone I intended to go to war with at some point. Maybe I could try to take over the splinterfist ogres in general? Duel their leader for the position of chief? Or have one of my ogres do it after force feeding them a bunch of potions and magical buffs, maybe poisoning the incumbent.
I snapped back to reality to hear Lividia still chattering away at a very tense and overwhelmed looking Talaada about the inherent superiority of humans and dragons (in that order). I had to get this back on track. I quickly went into Talaada's control panel and input "Accepting the doctrine of the cult of love" paired with "negative emotion reduction" and then put it in again, this time paired with validation. I finished up with "keeping the cult's teaching secret from the uninitiated" with validation as well.
"Do not worry about Lividia. She is very opinionated, and excited to see your progress. As you can tell, she is very fond of humanity." I put an arm around Lividia and she calmed quickly. "Now we will need to teach you the final step to initiation: the visage. First you must give and accept love, becoming the version of you we can see through our love. Your best self. Then, you become one with our collective, turning into a dragon and sharing in the full extent of our power. All that is left is for you to regain your individuality by taking on the form that will most allow you to love yourself. That is what it means to take on a visage." Can you believe I improvised that? I was just going all in on this cult formation business.
She didn't immediately accept it all, but she was clearly uncomfortable as a dragon and eager to move on to the learning process. So was I. We needed to start slow, parsing out the different aspects of the spell. It required a clear image, pure intent, an internal wellspring of power, and correct pronunciation. If any of the elements weren't included, there would be either no effect, or at least nothing good. On a positive note, I had no intention of changing my form, so I could freely drill her on pronunciation without worrying about a misfire.
"As a dragon, you have the wellspring of power already. That's the practical reason we made you into a dragon for this purpose. So now you must picture your chosen visage clearly, and wish with all your heart to take that form. You must truly believe that form is you, a proper representation of who you wish to be and how you wish to be seen, with no doubts left. Only then should you speak the words in earnest." She had difficulty wrapping her head around it; it was a bit metaphysical for a subsistence farming swamp hermit who knew less than 100 people total and had moderate brain damage until the prior day. I was confident, or at least hopeful, that she'd get it soon. She certainly seemed to have enough dysphoria over being a dragon to really want to have a new form as soon as possible.
After a couple hours of slow progress, I left her in Lividia's care to teach her how to fly, breathe fire, and hunt as a dragon. She was staying in this form until she could get out of it herself, and I wanted her to be able to function on two or four legs interchangeably even once she had a visage.
I contacted Lillibeth for an update in text; she was inside of a hermit who was living alone. I teleported to him while he was repairing his fence, and apparently 12 hours of the amulet's influence had softened him a bit, letting Lillibeth push him to listen and do as asked when I arrived and gave my offer. I strongly suggested that he make contact with Dremuus, which he seemed cautiously open to. I sent Lillibeth out with a warning to focus on isolated individuals only, and be wary of people with strange crystals.
It was probably time to get back to work and check in everywhere. First up was going to be Abby and Eliza.
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