The Corrupted

5/27 noon

Tessa looked around at her new team. Mostly people she knew reasonably well at this point, other than Prudence. From what Erich had told them, they would be on active duty in the field for quite a while. The nature of his magic was that he always had further objectives, and this team had been assembled to move from mission to mission rapidly. They'd better get to know each other quickly.

None of them were elite, but they were all competent and covered each other's weaknesses well enough. The only potential weakness Tessa could imagine would be if they encountered something highly resistant to both fire magic and physical harm. Any reasonable threat should be easy enough to dispatch. Further, for their first mission they were acting as support for someone in a substantially higher weight class.

Tessa was fairly certain that Emeriss could easily kill all of them if she felt so inclined, and apparently Lord Erich's plan was to have the dragon single-handedly neutralize an entire fortified village full of bear men. Tessa's team were there to watch her back in case anything surprising happened, and to put bears into cold storage. They only really had two targets, and The Classics had been expressly forbidden from engaging with one of them.

The Classics. She supposed it was endearing; everyone here except prudence were among Erich's first ten captures. They had fought together until he outgrew them, and then assigned them small, out of the way tasks. Auffrey and Prudence had been forgotten about in Menathil Harbor for a week, apparently. Well, it felt nice to be remembered.

The Classics felt fairly superfluous when they saw the wave of green fog envelop the first dozen bear men that came out to meet the invaders, putting most of them to sleep. No time to feel inadequate, though; there was work to be done before the rest of the village rallied. Tessa had been given the specific task of following the compass in her necklace to find one of their targets, a bear man named Ferocitus. Meanwhile, Emeriss flew like an arrow to kill her own target, their chieftain.

All around her, the other girls were touching bear men and sending them to the inventory, or to the basements of a few different houses in Duskwood once that was full. Ferocitus was special; he was supposed to get his own necklace before he was sent, so he wouldn't be lost in the shuffle. He was passed out when she found him along the trail of sleeping bears Emeriss left behind, already starting to stir as he fought off the sleeping gas. She had enough time to wrap a necklace around his neck, but he was too aware to be sent away immediately.

Tessa ended up needing to stand over him, calling out for backup as the Furbolgs all rose around her. She'd gotten cocky and rushed in to finish the mission as quickly as possible; her team was still near their starting point. They were making their way towards her, but soon they'd need to stop and defend themselves too..

Tessa wasn't sure whether it was a blessing or a curse, but when the Furbolgs saw the necklace around Ferocitus's neck, they seemed irrationally angry. Soon, Tessa was desperately holding off five hulking bear-men as they tried to kill their own comrade as much as they tried to kill her. Thankfully, he wasn't willing to just take it, so they ended up fighting as allies, for the moment.

It was a desperate minute, but then a wave of green from Emeriss enveloped them again; the chieftain had been handled. When the furbolgs started to wake up again, almost half of them that had been crowded around Tessa had vanished. Mission complete, total success.

••••••••••

Kathra'Natir was starting to get nervous. Most of the standard weak points in the elf's soul were closing, not widening as they should. She was feeding him energy, but the amulet seemed to be suppressing him somehow. He might be able to fully overpower her will, but that was horribly overt, and she was surrounded by men that he was fairly certain he couldn't defeat in a direct confrontation, especially not at less than full power. He'd felt confident about his plan to bide his time, but he was starting to think that Erius had outplayed him somehow.

It wasn't his first time being sealed inside of a host that he couldn't control, and the Sire knew it wouldn't be the last. He would need to restrain himself for now, and get the host killed when he had the chance. Shame; she was such a strong and receptive girl. He could have ridden her for quite some time. Some of his brothers had deployed a mourneblade on this planet, and apparently the wielder had gone rogue. Good idea, terrible execution; they would need to retrieve Frostmourne if they were to claim Azeroth for Sire Denathrius. If they could do that, then it wouldn't matter that they had blown their cover with Sargeras.

Of course, his current plan was to either continue to bide his time, or take his one shot trying to get this girls companions to kill her in the heat of the moment. Unlikely to work, that. Mortals, unless they were properly primed, could show remarkable levels of loyalty at the most inconvenient times. Sullenly, the nathrezim settled back, and waited.

••••••••••

She felt her hoof pressing down on the neck of the Eredar woman. A sweet girl, a classmate and friend, working her way through school before Sargeras had granted the Eredar his gift. She was stronger than the girl, now. So much stronger. She could have crushed her windpipe instantly, but instead she felt every sickening moment as the girl passed out first, clawing at the newly red leg with her fingernails, begging for mercy. She had rejected the titan's gift, and that meant death.

"Nozara! Nozara, please! You don't have to do this!"

When it had happened the first time, that might have been true. Perhaps; she didn't really know how it worked. She'd been so caught up in the moment, in the rush of power, the whole new world of glory and power the Titan had promised. She had savored the sight of hope dying in the girl's eyes for a moment, and then forgotten about her. It had been her third kill that day, after all. Just the first one she'd really known. No one in her family had rejected the gift, after all. Instead they'd died.

With that thought she was luxuriating in the heady rush of fel magic as her brother writhed on the ground next to her in his last moments. They had been roommates, pooling money so they could save for their respective futures. She wasn't sure if it was possible to help someone who was having difficulty accepting the gift; no one she knew had actually tried.

Nozara woke up. Again. Again the nightmares had come. She didn't care about the deaths of some idiots too weak to join the Legion. She didn't want to care. But every time she let her guard down, that hateful bitch in the back of her head would try to make her feel guilty. That wouldn't help her in any way. It wouldn't make her stronger, or help her take over Xoroth, or please Erich. Not as far as she knew, anyway. He seemed a sensible sort, why dig up old wounds?

The Nozara in the back of her head was not the same girl who she had once been. No, she was more like what would have happened if that girl had been forced to do all the things Nozara had in fact done quite willingly as a member of the Legion. Unsurprisingly, the result was not pretty or productive.

She'd need to tell Lord Bismark about the voice. Hopefully he could silence it, or remove it if he had some use for the damn thing. Guilt was not productive or pleasant. She may be betraying Sargeras now, but she certainly didn't want to have to start feeling guilty about her last several millennia.

••••••••••

Scarletleaf was doing her best, but she was only passable at turning into a snake. Apparently most Druids preferred a big cat for their predator forms, but she couldn't imagine why. As a snake she could move so quietly, and blend in with the other creatures of the cave. She and Harnea were quietly exploring near the druid occupied parts of the Wailing Caverns, hoping to find Naralex. Her old master, apparently. His name filled her with warmth and concern, so it was easy to believe that she'd known him once.

Harnea, in the form of a great cat and relying far more on the supernatural kind of stealth, was exploring more deeply, looking for Lord Serpentis. The logic that he would be guarding the Archdruid seemed reasonable to everyone in the team, and they would need to deal with Serpentis eventually either way. Outside, Norin and Dremuus were on standby to summon them out of the caves if they got a call.

Each of the Druids, when she saw them wandering the passages in a daze, were familiar to her. She didn't know their names, couldn't say two things about them, but they were once her friends and colleagues. She was glad that they were planned to survive, but she wasn't quite naive enough to think that they all would. The force that ruled this place would never allow that.

She poked her head through another tunnel and found a man sleeping on a slab of rock. He was a pale blue night elf, with white hair. He was covered in a layer of dust and grime, and would toss and turn fitfully every few seconds. The corruption was heavy in this room, managing to be full of life yet entirely malignant. She slipped in, hoping to teleport him out, but he didn't count as willing for whatever reason. As she touched him, she heard a slurping noise. Twisting her long body around, she saw several masses of grey-green protoplasm coming out of the underground river nearby, surging towards her.

She called for help from Norin, and focused on avoiding the creatures. It's a poor showing if you can't survive for 10 seconds, and Scarletleaf refused to let herself be remembered as someone who died in a cave on her first mission. She arrived back at the camp with a smile. Sure it was a trap, but she knew where Naralex was, unless they moved him. That seemed unlikely, though; he was at the heart of the corruption.