I ran back to the others, as they weren’t too far away, and the fighting was still ongoing.
It was ongoing very, very bloodily. My exultation at finally fighting Hagmom had been blowing through the Markspace with singing glory.
My fury at her getting away had blown through it like a crescendo of howling rage, and everything fighting here was absolutely freaking berserk, just a tool for me to vent my wrath upon everything in their way.
I dove right into the slaughter as all the drak could only reel in disbelief at what they were fighting, and die. Die. DIE ARRRRRRRRRRRRRRGH!
---
“That’s a new look for you. Eau de Sama the Butcher?” Briggs asked, not giving me any emotional support at all. I knifed an elbow into his ribs, and he grunted in mock pain.
I was absolutely covered in gore, because it made me feel better for the moment. It looked like I took a bath in a dragon’s innards, and the smell could make eyes water at ten paces.
“I feel like being miserable. Don’t bug me while I stew.” I walked over to a pool of water burning with vivic flames, sat down in it, and began to glower.
The area about me emptied rather quickly. I didn’t fight the unwhite flames as they stole up me to eat away the blood and body parts, and anyways, the lads had a lot of salvage work to do, along with disposing of other drak that hadn’t heard the news still incoming.
But the urgency had vanished with the berserker rage. While we still had shit left to do, the Glory Award had come down and given everyone a Warlord’s alternative to hearty sex, blessing everyone with the knowledge that DAMN, slaughtering for a Good Cause was a really cool thing. Even the Three Kings were a little rocked by the sensation.
Helped with the soul-deep exhaustion and bone-aching stress of coming out of a berserker state lasting nearly an hour. If they hadn’t been ExLites or possessed of Con’s of 40 (hey there, little sisters, Briggs, sorry about that), they’d basically be dead.
That Wyrm was dead, and all his goodies earmarked for King Ivory, who had a lot of ground to make up on the personal equipment side of things. Elder Arg berated him for disdaining such items, especially when Void Brothers were walking by with Zehn Slot Weapons that made him very wary, indeed.
King Ivory agreed that a set of Mire Wyrm Barding would look very attractive thereafter. The ignominious fate of being skinned to become armor for its conqueror soon began, while a Jar was devoted to containing the Wyrm’s blood.
All told, its carcass was probably worth a hundred goldweight in materials and power comps, and various fractions of that value were enjoyed by all the other dead dragons in the area. The sheer amount of blood going to be pulled out and burned for comps was immense.
Alas for the mountains of goldweight we’d lost on the way here... yeah, that was gonna bum me for a while. The Land was so greedy...
The apes were feasting on dragon flesh despite being nominal vegetarians, truly an enjoyable occurrence for them. Given their appetites, the carcasses weren’t going to last too long, and they were all interested in some dragonhide armor, not much liking metal armor if they could avoid it.
Me, I had to think. There was so much stuff I had to finish personally, and then other stuff we had to finish up. Hagmom had gotten away for now, but there was so much stuff left to do which we could still address.
I certainly wasn’t planning on leaving before True Dawn. But that didn’t mean I needed to drag everyone else around. After all, destruction of this place was inevitable.
So, it was time to talk.
-----
We couldn’t ‘take a day off’, because we were being constantly bugged by stuff being drawn from hundreds of miles away to kill us. That was okay, everyone wanted some Karma, more comps, and the eats were appreciated. There was enough to keep everyone busy if we spread out.
Wayfair was still constrained by Zones, but there was a much, much larger area she could teleport through freely now, and there’s nothing like an unlimited teleporter for mass scouting services over large areas. In a very short time, The Map around us was filled in, clusters of enemies noted, and strike teams were moving off in all directions to harvest them.
She was getting to Travel, and naturally loving it.
The angelic haror played spell support, while mixed teams of apes, berserkers, Ironblood, and dwarves were sent this way and that. The haror were more there for emergencies than anything, giving some missile support and extra scouting in the meantime, but the physical power of the troops was generally equal to the task. Griffons and dragons sought out other fliers to head off problems, moved back and forth to support against larger forces, and generally everyone kept pretty busy as we headed back to the Empire Zone.
The Brothers dispersed, some concentrating on finding and hunting down Hags. AA stayed with us, ready to finish the job of driving the Wake all the way to the Hole.
The girls went out with the Kings, who were determined to reclaim some of their power and majesty by dint of earning a LOT more Class Levels. They and my Hellpuppies accompanied King Grey, naturally enough. King Gold was hunting with the berserkers, of course, while King Ivory had a howdah whipped up and all the gnomes and hyn were hooting and shooting from atop him in a bristling cluster of missile fire, working with King Ivory as they rolled across the landscape, killing anything dumb enough to get in their way.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
----
“Elder Arg.”
The massive silverhide looked at me respectfully as I plopped down on his shoulder. The fact I was talking to him in person meant I wanted a bit of privacy, and the couple apes hanging around found other places to chew down drak meat into their full tummies.
His grunt asked me what was up.
“Two things. One, I need your help on a special project. Two projects, actually. One is metallurgy, the other is making a Sword.”
He huffed slyly. “Yeah, we’ve got the quintessence, that was the toughest thing. We can make some orichalcum. Fuzzy’s been wanting his ultimate armor, so getting enough raw metal for that is a thing. But, it’s a Fifteen Ranks thing with Alchemy to make, so, not something we can do without help.”
He patted his chest with his fist. “Thanks. I’m also going to be making an orichalcum sword with some of those psionic properties I told you about.” He grunted, shaking his head. “It’s related to what’s going to happen outside. I’m covering my bases. If nothing goes bad, I have a back-up Weapon. If it does, I’ll need it.”
He choffed understanding. Based on what I’d done for him and his tribe, this was nothing.
“But... you can’t do that while we’re moving, which is fortunate, because we’ve got to get you back home.”
That got his attention, and he huffed quickly, staring at me.
I pointed up at the Wake. “There’s an open trail to teleport along on that path. Also, anybody and everything along the Obelisks we’ve toppled can now move freely along that path. I told you that ultimately most of this area is going to go away. The Shamans, Casters, and Diviners of the races are going to foresee this. Their alternatives are to flee into the side realms, risking the temporal shift, and that’s if they can get a Ritual to do so. The other is to run along the Wake towards the way out.”
His dark eyes widened.
Monkey High was right in the way of those who would be fleeing.
“They’ve got a long way to go, but they literally have nothing better to do with their lives. There isn’t enough magic to get them out of this Shardzone, so they’ll start heading along the back path as far as they can, and Ritualize teams in to take out the Obelisks as they run into them, maybe.
“Whatever, your people are right in the way, because we didn’t go around you. They are going to need you there to protect them. The smart ones may not bug you, but there’s no end of stupid in the world.
“You might think about taking down the Obelisks in the neighboring zones, making it easier to go around you. As long as you’re Beyond Law and Chaos, and have Brilliant Weapons, you should be able to take out the guardians, right?”
He made a long growl. “If it was that easy, I wouldn’t have said anything. That’ll be true when True Dawn comes.”
He agreed despite himself, rumbling a few times. “Yeah, we’re going back to the Hag City, we’re going to loot everything we can for you to take with you. There should be literally tons of gold you can haul out of there... and, I think the dragons will want to go with you.” I leaned in closer, and he did the same. “Some of your guys took Whitesmithing, right? We can’t just drop gold on them, and they’re too vain to ask, but I think making some objects out of gold for their hoards that commemorate all our fights, the friendship between the apes and the dragons, and similar things, would be a great use of their share of the gold, right?”
He laughed deep in his chest, agreeing with me. He definitely wasn’t afraid of dragons, but they were indeed very useful, and good friends to have. Wholesale slaughter of things wasn’t normally their cup of tea, although they were very energetic about scouring down any hint of Mire bloodlines and eradicating them, muttering and cursing about how their darker kin would spread their bloodlines to the whole world if they could. It was likely time for them to leave this barbarous outright slaughter, and defending the monkey plateau would be a thing they could get behind.
--------
I sat down and had a heart-to-heart with my Weapons. We were all pissed about Hagmom getting away; Tremble the most, the rest because Tremble and I were. Tremble, after all, had a much-admired Special Purpose!
But the fact was, there were big Events coming up, and when things like that happened, I wasn’t going to risk their existence just because I wanted them along. I laid out the scenarios for them, had them look at the choices that had to be made, and the risks and scales of things that were going to happen.
They didn’t like it, as their existence had revolved around me, but they also weren’t dumb and could all listen in on Marktell when Soulbound with me.
Things might not happen the way I expected them to... but I wasn’t going to bank on it, and neither should they. After all, they had the Ironblood and my little sisters to look after, too, not just me. Did they think I was going to let them get wiped out when Hagmom was still out there and might try to target them? Uh-uh, not happening.
I was making the hard choice here, kids, so what mom says, goes...
-------
And there was that other thing.
i.e. apes mature sexually well before humans.
So, yeppers, Briggs woke up.
Hey, he had kept some skill points back, too, clever guy. Alas, that meant he could only grab one point a day about certain kinds of activities. I helped him with the akashic resonance.
So, ten days of proper education had to follow. With teeth. And fuzz. And clashing Vajras. It was occasionally rather loud. We were occasionally interrupted by things with teeth and scales, which made it more fun, given the amount of healthy foreplay we tended to exhibit.
Briggs was also undergoing a growth spurt, which also drove a tremendous appetite, and lots of energy. He was taller than I was now, and I swear he was adding on an inch a week.
His skinplate was probably going to get its seams tested. I expected him to reach over seven feet tall and four hundred pounds, pretty much all of it steel-hard muscle. Harum, harum, rarrgh!
It turned out the haror weren’t at all squeamish about enjoying things with the Ironblood or the berserkers, and Wayfair naturally had to sample each of those Helixes personally, although Errant did escape her clutches, probably after Hazé cleared her throat a few times in warning.
My two hours of downtime got much cozier and less meditative. I was all for that. The fact that Briggs could endure through it all got him quite a bit of respect from the lads, too.
As for the girls, well, Veis seemed to have a thing for hyn, the more dangerous the better; Amber occupied herself with Errant’s moody protégé Klistos, who had realized that having Heaven behind you didn’t mean you were invincible; Verd and our druid Barus started getting along remarkably well; and the Amazon Trilla and Kadifyr were having a fling. Estemar and the other Heavenbound seemed to be intent on trying to preserve their virtue, which was pretty much an impossibility for the pretty boys with angelic haror around eager to test the silver soul of a Paladin and the touch of Heaven’s flames.
I just laughed as they were finally cornered and had to succumb, and you know, they looked a lot more relaxed the next day. We were in much too violent an occupation to be saving ourselves for marriage...