章 244: Confrontation
6/5 night
Rend was lounging on the balcony, looking down at me as I challenged him. The aged orc had fought in the First War, many decades ago, and it showed in his long, snowy white hair. A smooth voice from someone else on the balcony responded on the Warchief's behalf.
"A true orc, are you? I think not. You'll need to prove it before the Warchief will humor you." The warriors gathered in the stands, mostly orcs with a smattering of trolls and ogres mixed in, roared their agreement.
"Alright. Why the hell not?" Outside the arena, my troops were continuing the raid. I may be the king, but I wasn't the strongest piece on the board. I wasn't even in the top ten. Me, alone, keeping the attention of a few hundred elite warriors and their Warchief seemed like it would be a good use of my time.
Rend was an egotist, and he built his entire self image on how good he was at killing things. He'd been thrust into a genocidal war by his father at the age of five, artificially aged to adulthood so he would be more physically capable of killing. It was no wonder that when the Horde tried to shift to a less psychotic footing, Rend and his 10,000 closest friends had decided to set up their own mountain fortress where bloodlust was still king. I was only too happy to capitalize on that; even if he turned out to be tougher than me, I wasn't exactly a man of honor. If things went poorly, I could and would just blink out.
The gate at the opposite end of the arena opened, and a trio of orcs came out to play. The one on the left charged me while her two companions held back to cast spells. I used shadowstrike, summoning a dagger infused with paralytic poison that passed straight through her armor as if it weren't there. When she was a few steps away from me, I winked out of existence, appearing behind the orcish man summoning a mass of void energy to throw at me and cleaving through most of his neck with an Archeus infused strike.
The other caster, to her credit, had no way of knowing that a fireball would splash off of me like a water balloon. I charged on foot to save mana, shooting her with my bow once on the way over to interrupt her next spell. Blue light, that time; can't have myself getting frozen, now can I? I wasn't so excellent a fighter that the veteran orcish mage died instantly, but I was substantially stronger than her and wearing armor. The only hit I took, in fact, was a shadowbolt from above. I didn't see who cast it, but I had other things to worry about.
The shadowstrike's slowing effect faded quickly, but a few arrows put the warrior down before she could get to me. The fight was over in about twenty seconds. For effect, I teleported back to my starting point and raised my arms. "Thank you! I needed a warm up. So, will I get to fight warriors next?"
While the fickle crowd cheered, I started to summon my demons. Gerd, Noktog, and Pryzhum first, mostly because I could remember their names. They were far from the best fighters I had at my disposal, I essentially thought of them as passive buffs for magic that I only occasionally used, but they were summoned demons. An extension of myself by the rules of most arenas in the Warcraft universe.
The next wave was a team of five black dragonspawn; fully devoted to Nefarian if they were willing to fight me despite my black dragon smell. That actually gave me an idea; I blinked onto the back of the rearmost dragon as my demons tried to play keep away. Following my instincts, I turned up the intensity of my scent with potpourri, and shifted it subtly to that of another black dragon. "Tell me you love me."
"I love you, my lord!" She was mine. Nice and exploitable. 5v4 into a 4v5. I distinctly heard… someone… gasp in rage, then begin speaking to himself. None of my concern.
"What? How did he… hmm. Warriors! Declare your love for me!" The four remaining dragonspawn snapped their heads up to do just that. I assessed the situation and an itch in the back of my head told me I was missing something. Nefarian must be here somewhere, but I couldn't tell where. I moved back into the fight astride my new dragonspawn. I could track him down later.
Noktog was a Flameborn these days; the only one that I hadn't gifted to Lividia. Unfortunately, his fire bolts were just as ineffective against the dragonspawn as the orc's had been against me, and randomly flailing with his claws wouldn't do him much good against trained professionals. He went down embarrassingly fast. Pryzhum was a Brute, a Satyr/ogre hybrid, and between mirror images and her claws she was doing alright. Not great, but well enough to keep her opponent distracted. Gerd, my human/succubus in witch cosplay, had been trained as a huntress in order to give her some combat options. At the moment she was playing keepaway, pelting the enemy with moonglaives from atop her nightsaber; the former ogress was having an incredible amount of fun, judging by her deranged cackling.
I moved to block the dragonspawn that was trying to intercept her wild ride. It was a stronger enemy than the orc mage by a substantial margin, but I was faster than it. My shadowstrike saw to it that I was much, much faster, and a power word: shield ensured that even if I did get clipped it wouldn't matter. My moon blade left large cuts, and my poisonous bow imbued each strike with snake venom. One dose didn't mean much to a dragonspawn, but they added up.
Everything seemed to be going quite well, but then Gerd's laughter stopped. I blinked away from my prey and checked on her. She looked back at me with a strange, confused expression, as if she were trying to do something but couldn't figure out how. I smelled shadow magic in the air with my draconic senses. She turned away from me and charged Pryzhum, throwing her moonglaive directly through one of the satyr girl's mirror images.
"Stop! Stop that!" She turned and threw her next moonglaive at my new dragonspawn. "Stop attacking people!" She turned back towards Pryzhum and started to use Seduction, the succubus exclusive version of shadow word: Charm. I dismissed her at that point, and looked around to try to figure out who was mind controlling my minions. It had to be-
"I'll tear your spine out with my bare hands!" The bellowing cry of Dal'Rend Blackhand, son of the first Warchief, disrupted my line of thinking. He charged into the arena on the back of a strange purple and green dragon and flanked by a dozen whelps with similar colorization. "Oh? So we are allowed to bring along dragons? Don't mind if I do!" I'd hardly completed the thought before Lividia made her entrance by obliterating one of the remaining dragonspawn with a charged up Smite.
"Send along two of my handmaidens, would you? Ragda and Tikki will do nicely." She spoke calmly into her amulet before she resumed the carnage with a shield upon me and a wave of light that scattered the chromatic whelps. "You had need of me, my king?"
I vaulted into the middle of the disoriented whelps, mowing most of them down with a fan of knives, before blinking next to my prime consort. "I just thought we hadn't fought together in a while."
"Aww. That's sweet. Ugly orc on the abomination?"
"Got it in one." I was actually pretty confident that Lividia could take him down alone, even if only by exploding, but it seemed much wiser to cooperate and take down the dragon and rider quickly. I occupied the Warchief while Lividia, her Flameborn, and my new dragonspawn tried to disassemble him from afar. Rend was no slouch; when I moved into melee with him I had to switch to a defensive stance almost immediately. I had to use Archaeus blasts to deflect his strikes as often as I could use them aggressively. The random shadowbolts also took up a lot of my time dodging, and if Lividia hadn't been healing me that would have been much more of a problem. I really needed to stop… Nefarian.
Nefarian was here. On the platform. He had been talking and casting this whole fight! He was using the thing! The perception filter Onyxia had told me about! He could make it was almost impossible to perceive him if there were more obviously dangerous things competing for your attention. It let him wander around the edges of a battlefield, throwing spells around freely as long as he didn't make himself seem too dangerous. When Gerd turned on me, he must have been dominating her; when she was looking at me, that must have been him trying to make her attack me.
Against Nefarian, my retinue effectively didn't have their defenses for anything that applied to combat, but I still had resistance. I could see him for the threat he was, and my prime consort was in his line of sight. I couldn't risk him getting frisky with Lividia, even if it seemed unlikely. "Kill him! I have something I need to do!" I blinked onto the platform and took a swing at someone who could probably squash me like a bug.
Nefarian was clad in form fitting armor as part of his visage, and it seemed to be at least partially functional. Enough to tank a non-empowered strike from me, anyway. "Ah, finally noticed, did you?" He responded, to my shock, with a brutal roundhouse kick followed up with a few jabs. After the initial hit, I blinked a few feet forward, oriented so I was facing his back. A shadowstrike slowed him down a bit, but he still moved towards me with surprising speed by diving into a roll and hopping up directly in front of me.
"Chi was something of a dead end for research, but it's quite effective for making this feeble body into a threat when necessary." Nefarian spoke conversationally as he kept swinging. "My real magic is just a little too flashy to pair with this trick. The teachings of Pandaria are more than enough to bash your head in, however."
I could dodge most of his blows, especially when he was sluggish from shadowstrike, but when I hit him he seemed largely unfazed. Full Archaeus blasts did more, but if I disengaged for long enough for my blade to charge, he'd swap over to homing shadow bolts that were nearly impossible to avoid. I did try the obvious counter and teleported out of his line of sight, but that proved to be a mistake.
"Stop hiding and face me, you rogue!" As he spoke, I was abruptly teleported back into his presence with bands of force around my legs to stop me from moving. I desperately parried and it generally worked; I took a beating, but nothing vital was damaged. He wasn't the only one wearing armor. After a few seconds, I blinked out of my bonds and let loose another shadowstrike.
He was taking damage, especially from the shadowstrikes, but not enough. If I fought perfectly, I could have probably worn him down eventually, but expecting perfection is a good way to lose. My retinue was doing a wonderful job of keeping the rest of the Blackrock orcs from interfering in my bout, but seemed genuinely confused when I told them to attack my opponent. Lividia threw a single smite at him before getting distracted, and from her expression she seemed to be humoring me.
My spotter seemed to be immune, probably because she was well out of the area of Nefarian's spell, but a modest Shadow Word: Pain seemed to be all I could expect out of her. Unless… "Helena! Send me anything that might help." At that point, I started getting the most random items.
A few elixirs came first. Agility and Greater Trolls blood; I used them directly from my inventory and my wounds started to heal. On a related note, I was shifted to draconid form, which gave me some reach on my mighty draconic foe. With those, the fighting became a bit more even, though if I'd tried to just trade blows he'd definitely have still won in the end. He shrugged off a grenade, and one handful of dream powder from Vanessa just made him sneeze once. Up next was the reversing mirror. Unfortunately, he was sufficiently higher tier than me that my options were very unimpressive. Total waste of a mirror.
Exclusively sexually attracted to dragons
Tends to become overly focused on his current project, abandoning all other concerns
Convinced of his own absolute supremacy in all fields he is familiar with.
I suppose I could have undermined his confidence or made him more scatterbrained, but on the other hand it might have just made him more humble or able to look at the big picture. I went with the sexual attraction bit because it seemed extremely unlikely to backfire.
Exclusively sexually attracted to humanoids.
Fucking great. The next attempt was the Pen of Ownership, but I wasn't strong enough to pin him or fast enough that I could write on him legibly without him being held still. I lost one charge worth of ink trying, though. It would have unquestionably been worth it if I'd succeeded, but in retrospect it was a very stupid Hail Mary.
My salvation did come in the form of company swag, but not one of the flashier ones. Helena applied every skill chip to me, since those tend to be subtle and only come up when they are useful. I'm not sure what she expected the herbalist chip to do, but the Geomancy chip was just what the doctor ordered.
I've been calling Geomancy bootleg shamanism, and I stand by that. There was just one small thing that I forgot while saying that. Shamanism is really really useful. Shamans are versatile combatants with spells that strengthen them in melee, and their dollar store equivalents are too. The moment that the skill chip slotted into place, I knew how to beat Nefarian.
I did my standard song and dance routine, teleporting away from the dragon and throwing a fan of knives his way. He started a shadowbolt, as has become tradition at this point when I tried to get space, but this time I was able to send a pulse of energy through the stone we both stood on, disrupting his magic and causing the spell to fail. While he recovered from that, I planted my feet and infused my moonblade with the blessing known as Rockbiter, resulting in a weapon quite capable of cleaving through stone. Or the hide of a black dragon.
He came to fear me after that. I had reach, speed, and power on my side. I could interrupt his precious spells, I could outfight him, and we both knew it. Each strike went from an irritating scratch to a deep slash. With both of us in our visages, the deck was stacked in my favor. Unfortunately, there was absolutely nothing keeping him in his visage and Helena had forgotten something quite important. Everyone was a black or red dragon hybrid because Nefarian's shadow flame was very, very lethal.
In the space of a few seconds, Nefarian went from an armored human that I was pushing towards the edge of the balcony to a titanic dragon spewing purple fire which clung to my green dragon/troll/high elf form. In moments, my arm and both of my legs disintegrated. Of course, my minions noticed that, so Nefarian took a rather epic smite to the face moments after wrecking my shit. The overflow healing probably saved my life.
I was warped out by Helena at that point, and carted off to the circle of empty moonwells and healers. I was later told that Nefarian wreaked havoc among my troops until a multiracial group of strong sexy women told him to stop. The fierce women in question were of course Alexstrasza, Ysera, Tyrygosa, and Onyxia. He fought hard, but when the least threatening person among your enemies is an archmage that is also a dragon, you are pretty much doomed. He'd somehow managed to escape along with much of the contents of his lab, but he was finished here.
The shattered remnants of the Dark Horde agreed to submit to Lividia's leadership, as she was the one that won the Mok'Gora. Sure. Why the fuck not. She could use a bigger entourage. I wasn't in the mood to look too closely, unfortunately. I was down three limbs. Again. The only good news? I was actually a troll at the moment and had many strong trollsblood potions and Druidic healing to accelerate my regrowth. I'd be fine by tomorrow evening, according to Ysondre. I went to sleep with one major thought knocking around in my head. I needed to bestronger if I was going to beat Nefarian next time.
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