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| Details |
| Author: | inkie |
| Summary: | Shine writes to Lena with an update on Blue Squad's latest. |
| Rating: | M for Mature 17+ |
Chain: Shena
Highbank
14 April
Princess -
I’m going to start with the worst and know you’ll bear in mind that I’m writing to you so obviously it can’t have been that bad.
We got — I guess ‘eaten’ is the word? by some kind of Old God servant. We killed it, we got out, I’m fine but I don’t think I’ll be wearing that armor again. Atley’s fine I think though I’m not sure how I’d tell if he wasn’t unless he was bleeding out and even if he was bleeding out he’d probably try to walk it off. Bran is probably not fine in the strictest sense but he’s got Oranna to worry over him. Oranna would maybe not be fine except she’s got Bran to worry over and she seems like a lady who does better when she’s worrying about someone else.
The wedding went pretty badly, you’ve probably guessed. The shaman who was doing the ceremony turned out to have gone over to the Twilights. He turned into some kind of giant tentacle thing partway through and tried to do whatever it is tentacle things do which I don’t really know as I’m not familiar but I am guessing it would not have ended well for us. There was some shouting about consuming lifeblood and some shadow magic and general smashing of things.
It turns out the Wildhammers are into that kind of party though, so we all managed to bring the thing down pretty quick and then everyone went back to drinking and celebrating because I guess nothing brings the clans together like a good killing.
That bard didn’t even get to sing his song, so I suppose it could have been worse.
Kurdran Fucking Wildhammer gave me a drink. He gave us all drinks, but as I am one of us all, I got a drink from Kurdran Fucking Wildhammer. Tell Fallon for me, will you?
The old shaman — the tentacle one’s father — sent us to talk to some of the Earthen Ring who were investigating a problem to the west. The problem turned out to be a gigantic mouth in the ground surrounded by tentacles, also gigantic. Have you ever seen an octopus mouth? If you turn one upside down? It was basically that except the size of a Stormwind City block and full of teeth instead of beaked. I have a new appreciation for the lack of octopus teeth.
The shamans sent us out to kill a nest of cultists, which was fine, and collect a lot of flammables which would also have been fine if anyone had thought for ten seconds about how to use them. I’m guessing if we had dumped a dozen barrels’ worth of incendiary oil and some fire elemental cores down the thing’s gullet it would have saved everyone a lot of time. But that’s not what we did because the shamans were planning to summon a fire elemental instead and drop it in there. The summoning seemed to be taking them a while to sort out, and again: oil, fire.
But I’m just an old marine and maybe there’s something I don’t understand about gigantic ground-mouth-holes with tentacles. It does seem like an unusual thing for anyone to be expert in.
They wanted us to keep the tentacles busy while they sorted out the elemental, which was a roundabout way of saying ‘play bait’ except everyone honestly seemed to think it was going to work out fine. What are a few dozen giant monster tentacles compared to some blokes on birds, right? So we went out there on gryphons and the thing took the bait. In the bad, literal sense.
So that was us inside an Old God servant. The shamans had mostly been grabbed along with us and they were still trying to summon a giant fire elemental but now inside the thing. While I admired their persistence in the face of facts, it also seemed like maybe a bad idea to summon a fire elemental and use it to blow the thing up while we were all inside it.
Again, though, I am not the expert.
Then we all died, or I was pretty sure we died. It definitely felt like dying. Which as far as sensations go I would rank somewhere near the bottom of the scale. We were trying to protect the shamans while they concentrated on their bad idea and we got overwhelmed. By what? you ask. That is another thing I’m not clear on. The thing’s blood, I think. We got covered in blood (?) slimes. As far as sensations go I am going to rank that one either right above or right below death. I haven’t decided yet.
It turned out we weren’t dead, though. But when we came to we were in the bloody Maelstrom and who was there but that fucking orc. Jaina’s pet. He claimed he’d resurrected us and now we had to kill Deathwing to save the world. Let me back up a sentence to say: We were in the bloody Maelstrom and who was there but that fucking orc and also Deathwing. Except Deathwing was hanging there in the sky just absolutely obliterating everything and somehow Atley and Oranna and I were all unarmed and Bran couldn’t keep to his feet.
The fucking orc was calling us useless and shamans were dying and we were all stood there trying to figure out how four unarmed people kill a worldbreaking dragon that’s hanging in the sky a few hundred feet away and then the orc told us that it’s over, we lost, the world is doomed and it’s our fault.
Then we woke up for real because it was some sort of nightmare but one that we were all in together. I guess it was nice to have company. The shamans were being grabbed all around us by more tentacles because the thing decided to do tentacles on the inside too. So we got to work cutting shamans loose and trying not to be digested. There was also digesting going on, you see. We did not even experience much of that directly because the shamans did shield us, but I’m going to rank it at the absolute bottom of the list just speculatively.
At that point the thing’s brain showed up (for a given definition of ‘showed up’ because it was just some kind of ghostly pulsing thing) and we killed it and the Wildhammers did a nick of time thing and we’re all fine. Except maybe Bran.
I rushed the story there at the end because (a) it’s a lot to write out and would just be me repeating a lot of things about tentacles and monster fluids and (b) as I say, I’m not an expert and I am definitely not clear on why a lot of what happened happened.
Anyway that’s how we got eaten but not quite digested by an Old God’s servant. As weddings go it was not the best one I’ve been to. I know I said we can do whatever you want but I am going to have to draw a hard line at inviting Old Gods. I hope you didn’t have your heart set on it.
How’s the troll situation? How many ships has Fallon tried to seize? How far down is the Grand Admiral going to demote him, do you think?
Please be having a much better time than us.
x
Shine