Staging

5/20 Just after midnight

Lavinia Crowe, though one of the Undercity's finest enchanters, lacked the clout to demand an audience based off of a suspicion from one of her students. She'd needed to study the amulet herself and submit a full report. She didn't think there was any massive rush; poor Gretchen was doomed to whatever fate the necklace promised, but it was incredibly unlikely that there were many of the things in circulation. She wasn't specialized in jewelry, instead being focused primarily on using pure essences to add on to existing pieces, but if this was something that anyone shy of a master with a year of downtime could replicate she would eat her hat.

Her working theory was that some ancient troll emperor had had this commissioned for his harem of female bodyguards captured from enemy tribes. It had too many genuinely beneficial effects mixed in with the subversion of the wearer's will for it to be just for sex, and it's craftsmanship was far too intricate for any mundane craftsman. The troll guess was unscientific, based on process of elimination; it wasn't operating on the standard principles of arcane, shadow, holy, fel, or death magic. It seemed outside of the realm of Druidic or shamanic magic, and nothing else had the kind of long history needed to create something so refined, so perhaps it was voodoo based. Of course she didn't keep her random speculation in the report, save a note suggesting that a specialist from Orgrimmar be consulted.

Hopefully this would reach someone capable of addressing the situation while Gretchen was still cooperating. Lavinia had done her part, and once she had given both her report and theunfortunate victim to her friend Bethor Iceshard, who might be high ranked enough to get this in front of the Banshee Queen, she was going to go torpid and stay that way till noon.

••••••••••

5/20 morning

I woke up to my alarm. Well, technically I woke up to Lividia grabbing at my chest to turn off my alarm while still half asleep. I turned off the buzzing noise and slipped out of bed, letting her go back to sleep while I had one of the bowls of stew Lillibeth cooked. Today was, barring anything going horribly wrong, the big day. I still thought of it that way. I'll know I've gone a bit mad or ascended to godhood when a fight with a fully grown dragon stops feeling like a big deal.

I made my way to the Stormwind armory once Varian and Anduin arrived. We didn't get to sparring before I had to go, instead he focused on my stance. The most active bit consisted of me resetting to a proper Protection stance repeatedly. At first I alternated between a casual posture and a battle ready one, but then he had me start casting spells, sprinting, and sitting down. He wanted me to be ready to fight in less than a second, no matter what my starting point was or what I needed to do.

"We'll go over how to fight when you can't assume proper form later. For now, I want you ready to block no matter what." The training was not terribly structured; Varian seemed to just be studying me and trying to shore up whatever shortcomings I had one at a time. It worked though; martial talent and everlasting talent meant that anything he managed to teach me would stick.

••••••••••

I left a bit early so as to be present when Ysondre was captured. I liked being present for big moments. The draenei camp was looking pretty good. They'd built a rudimentary fence, and seemed to have gotten used to the giant fuckoff dragon at the center of their little community. I checked in with them, and Talaada properly introduced her uncle Noboru to me. He'd been initiated since last time I'd seen him, and was now wearing a looming pearly white skinned visage.

"He's offered to teach me his magic, now that he's reclaimed it! I know you have chosen Sadie to be my teacher, but his lessons make sense in the same way."

I looked him up and down. Not a priest but holy soul talent still accepted his tutelage? "Paladin?"

"Yes," he answered with a thick Eastern Europeanesque accent, "I believe that is your word for it."

"Right on. I'll need to learn from you too some time. I just don't have time to do everything I want, or I'd ask you to show me right now."

He laughed. "That is the way of things when you choose to lead."

"Yeah, I guess so." He wasn't wrong. I could probably have just found myself a nice little cabin around when I left Northshire and had a good time with my little harem. Pointless hedonism was fun but there was something really satisfying about getting stronger and doing ridiculous tasks; for fucks sake I was about to go kill a dragon for some magic mushrooms.

Naturally, when the moment clicked over… nothing. Oh. Right. She was paralyzed; only her eyes could move. I checked and confirmed that her eyes were open, and tracking me. Well, no need to be hasty.

"I'm going to need you to assume your visage before we can talk. You're just a bit too threatening right now." She stared at me. Silently. Then the edges of her form seemed to blur like wet paint and shrink down until there was a petit green skinned woman where the dragon once was. Still laying face down in the mud, amusingly. I replaced the general paralysis with one that was contingent on her attempting to harm a member of the retinue, just in case.

Since she wasn't trying to hurt anyone, she was able to wobble to her feet without much trouble. I took a good look at her; she was slim, with smooth green skin and hair in braids. For a night elf she was pretty short, only a few inches taller than me as Erich. Her outfit was odd; a fairly small leather top that covered only her breasts, gloves which went all the way past her elbows, and a skirt which hung low off of her hips while reaching all the way to her ankles. A strikingly odd bit was how she wore a leather blindfold across her eyes, which didn't seem to be doing much to blind her. She scanned the crowd until she saw me, and walked over before bowing to me respectfully.

https://imgur.com/a/yaNg7Hq

"I thank you. It is easy to give up on those who are lost. You didn't, and so I may live to serve my aspect once more. I hope you will allow it. What do you wish of me?"

"Your eternal love and devotion is all I need." She gave me a small smile, with a hint of melancholy. "But actually I'm planning to capture one of your fellows soon. One by the name Emeriss, followed by Taerar and Lethon. All with the hope of saving them."

"They are some of my oldest friends. I will happily help you to detain them, especially if they are as lost as I was and you can help them as you did me." She spoke softly, gently. "I am likely the least of them, but I will do all I can. You have others of great strength, together we can prevail."

"Oh absolutely. I just have one more question. It's very important that I give Ysera herself one of the medallions so she can be safe from corruption. Please tell me you know where she is?"

She winced, seeming uncomfortable sharing this information, but doing so fairly quickly. "She's likely either at Wyrmrest or the Emerald Dragonshrine, dreaming while her physical body is in a safe and guarded location. There might be other sites but those two are the heart of the Green Dragonflight."

Just like that, a demigoddess was in the bag. A moderate time and effort investment would go into getting someone to her, but if I sent Ysondre specifically it seemed pretty likely she'd be allowed to get very close to the sleeping aspect. Northrend wasn't friendly to visitors, but I was certain Ysondre knew exactly where the Emerald Dragonshrine was, and Wyrmrest temple was essentially the capital for all dragonkind and a bit of a recurring hub in WoW. Unfortunately I needed Ysondre for adventure purposes right now, but if she's in good shape after this fight I could send her off to collar Ysera.

"Excellent. I'll need you to deliver a necklace to her. We need her, but only after we've dealt with the situation at hand. I doubt we can capture her before the time limit is up on your kin."

Ysondre's melancholy smile continued as she spoke softly. "Of course. You are the clear lesser of two evils."

"Uh. What?"

"I know what you did to me. At least partially. I accept it as payment for freedom from the nightmare, but that's part of it too, isn't it? You made me accept it, and made me love youenough to enslave my mother. Will you at least promise to help us defeat the evil you saved me from? It's the enemy of all life. I believe you will stand against it, but I'd like to hear you say it, if only to make the pleasant dream last longer."

"Yes. I really do want to make the world a better place. I want to have some fun while I do it, but if I can manage it I want to make a world where things like the Nightmare can't hurt anyone, and decent people aren't forced to fight one another."

Ysondre nods, looking around at the camp full of draenei. "They do seem happy, at least. Those who serve you. I will choose to believe you."

"I never really got the appeal of being an asshole to people just because I could get away with it. I'm no saint, I can do bad things for… honestly sometimes petty reasons. But I prefer a crowd of women lovingly fawning over me." I cracked a smile and leered at her a bit, only partially for effect. "Whether or not I actually do anything with that."

"Well…" she blushed a far darker green, "I can't say I have any objections to that. I think I should, but I can't think of a single reason why you shouldn't be doing as you are."

"That's the ticket. Let me know if I'm doing something that manages to seem wrong to you. If I manage to upset one of you girls it probably means I've gone way too far. Anyway, enough chatter." I turned to the draenei. "Alright, line up. If you're coming, you already know what to do."

Every draenei in good enough shape to fight in dragon form, which was most of them, lined up and went to the apartment. Noboru didn't look like anyone had explained this to him, but followed after a brief exchange with Talaada. Hey, I could always use another healer, and he'd be a dragon so he didn't need armor. Once everyone was crammed into the apartment, including a rather confused looking Ysondre, I teleported to Caledra. The advance scouting party was set up a reasonably safe distance from the thorn wall, where we could prep.

Looking around I felt like I had a proper army. Certainly not a sea of soldiers as far as the horizon, but I had over a hundred people here ready to fight for me, and more than a dozen of them were dragons.

Onyxia was going over a map with Varian and a slightly bemused Hawkspear, who was a bit edgy about the sheer diversity of my army. The gaggle of demons and Eliza made him particularly nervous. He believed that she was Forsaken, but that didn't make him much more comfortable. To be fair, the rhythmic beating of Abby's heart was at least a little bit off-putting. We just won't bring up the fact that she's also part of a necromancer power couple.

The trio of commanders were positioning the troops, "Lady Prestor" carefully positioning Eliza, Stitches, the ogres, and the demons together by implying that she was the warlock in control of all of them. She'd summon the undead fodder later, to screen the flanks. For my part, I joined her as she took her position and started transforming the ogres one at a time into Satyr. I really should have gotten to this while I had spare time yesterday, but it honestly slipped my mind.

Hamhock was marked as "invalid" when I tried, which was a bit of an annoyance. If I could only turn him into things that were already two people simultaneously, he was much less useful. The rest though? Took it like a champ; some of them didn't even fall to the ground writhing in pain. Varian's bulky armor hid them well; someone expecting ogres would probably still believe they were ogres, at least from a distance. They had the height, they were just much thinner.

I could only bond three of them; it seemed like I'd run into the same hard cap as with imps: five. I brought in Ursula and Drusilla to make pacts with the remaining five, but I made a mental note to start teaching people, probably starting with Abby and Eliza and at least trying with Lillibeth and Mary, how to make pacts with willing demons. The retinue was all one big happy family, so most of the big tripwires to mass binding demons just didn't apply to me as long as the demons came pre-pacified.

I got another soul stone used on me, which I hopefully wouldn't need, and a spellstone. Standard suite of potions and a healthstone, too. The last thing I did before the final charge was grudgingly spend two credits on Body Resistance 2. The Farstriders had reported a field of strange, discolored mushrooms growing around Emeriss, and that sounded like poison to me. I wanted to pick up addiction defense so I could start recruiting elves using that as a selling point, but alas. Not dying comes first.