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| Details |
| Author: | MrMook |
| Summary: | Blue Squad races to Niuzao Temple and breaks the mantid siege before the ancient stronghold can fall. |
| Rating: | T for Teen |
Peixin smiles. "Looking forward to wolfing down a meal with the two of you, after we're done with our mission today!" She turns to Arric. "You too, but you didn't really fit the joke!" She grins.
Aric gestures to the mechanical wind serpent. "So what do you think of my dragonling redesign? Not only is it more aesthetically pleasing, but I updated its energy matrix so that it can fly for up to four hours at a time."
"It looks like a baby Cloud Serpent!" Peixin smiles.
"Exactly!" says Arric, beaming. Then he frowns a little. "That was Rica's issue."
Stormy snarls as Dane approaches. "Stormy, quiet," Arric snaps again, and the wolf stops growling and just proceeds to stare murderously at everyone.
Atley frowns down at Stormy. "New beast?"
"Oh! I'm so sorry, I became distracted by Stormy." Kenelly examines the dragonling more closely. "It's very impressive, Arric. I won't pretend to understand the mechanics of it, though."
"No, I've had Stormy for quite a while. But she's substituting for a misbehaving Rica today."
Atley grunts.
“Cobalt Company!” calls Ban Bearheart urgently as he steps out from his tent. “Cobalt Company, quickly, to me!”
Atley marches over. "Bearheart?"
“South of Niuzao Temple, there is a smaller island where part of the temple complex stood. That keep abuts an ancient amber tree, and it seems the mantid tunneled into the tree and used that approach to take the southern keep. The Sentinels at Niuzao Temple destroyed the bridge that connects that island to the main temple island, but the mantid are rebuilding it in preparation for a siege on the temple itself.”
“You must go south and find the entrance the mantid used to get into the tree. Hopefully you can surprise them swiftly from behind while their attention is focused ahead on the temple, and we can break this siege before it begins.”
Atley knits his brow. "A siege?" He sets his jaw and looks to the others.
"We'll do what we can to stop this," Arric promises.
Kenelly furrows her brow in concern, nodding firmly.
"We'll flank them and finish it. Squad, mount up," Atley growls.
"Time to get fuzzy, I suppose." Kenelly wolfs out!
Arric lifts Stormy into his sidecar.
"Just as Kenelly says!" Peixin adds.
Kenelly then…birds out?
Peixin looks expectantly at Arric and Dane. Come on guys. Kenelly said it's time to get fuzzy. We're waiting for the two of you.
One gnarled root of the ancient tree anchors it from its own island to the mainland. The root is dead and blackened, and has been hollowed to make a bridge to the tree. Globes of amber are caught in twisting, blackened tendrils around it, and the floor of the root-bridge is unevenly slicked with a coating of hardened amber.
Atley stares up at the gigantic tree with guarded awe.
"No matter wot," Atley growls. "We keep the temple standing."
"Of course!" says Arric.
Inside the tree, it is clear that something is very wrong. The wood is blackened, laced with rot and reeking of decay; tendrils of pale, slimy moss grow through it. There is a steady, wet clicking sound. As the team moves through the tunnel in the tree, amber-bodied insects come into view hanging from the walls and ceiling. They are chewing their way deeper into the old tree, and this is the source of the sound. Amber occasionally spatters
from the walls like blood.
Arric is becoming a very unhealthy shade of green.
Kenelly frowns, pressing a hand to the wooden 'wall'. "This tree is suffering."
Atley sets his jaw and draws Thunderfury and his shield.
Peixin smiles at the bugs crawling around, then nearly forgets to dodge a splatter of amber.
A Shado-Pan scout is hunched in the shadows. He looks around at Blue Squad’s approach. “Cobalt Company,” he whispers. “Good.”
Atley stiffens before he nods in greeting.
"Here to serve," Arric says with surprising energy given how nauseated he looks.
“I am Shado-Master Chum Kiu. I came here with a dozen of my men to stop the mantid siege. We hoped to take down their Wing Leader, Ner’onok, who directs the work to rebuild the bridge to the main temple.
Unfortunately, none of the men I sent ahead has returned. If you are going after Ner’onok yourselves to end the siege, can you rescue any of my people who are still alive?”
"Of course!" says Arric.
Atley nods fervently. "Aye. We'll see to them."
Atley looks ahead into the Hollowed Out Tree at grunts. "We can save the tree as well," he says, turning back to nod at Peixin. "Move forward. As one."
Atley scrapes some sludge off of his shield and glares at the wall. "Mind the wall."
“Come!” shrieks the mantid channeling amber at the center of the chamber. “Let me show you my skill! You will wish you hadn’t come this way!”
Arric is looking quite unhappy about this entire situation.
Stormy lets out a bone-chilling howl.
Atley growls. "Let's see his skill, then." He charges in to engage.
Peixin seems fine. This place is miles better than the one they visited last time.
Kenelly instinctively joins Stormy's howl.
Arric's dragonling joins the battle against the mantid vizier, zapping it with lightning.
Vizier Jin'bak begins summoning something as amber globules form and start sliming towards the center of the Hollowed Out Tree.
"Allow me to show you the power of amber alchemy…" Vizier Jin'bak warns.
Arric is at a safe distance, taking repeated, carefully aimed shots at weak points in the vizier's carapace.
Kenelly channels nature magic to heal her friends, careful not to draw directly from the sickened tree.
"Don't let them reach the center!" Atley booms, electrifying one of the slithering globs.
Peixin sprints towards the descending slimes, slashing through them with her daggers. The poison coated onto her daggers coagulates them, solidifying them into dust.
At last, Vizier Jin'bak falls into a gigantic, crumpled heap of an exoskeleton.
Arric calls out repeated short commands to Stormy, keeping her safe when she needs to avoid slimes, then sending her back in when it's time to eat bug.
Rica would have known what to do without commands, but Rica was bad, so Rica is grounded.
Atley turns back to the ring and squints. "That'll not be the last of them. Let's move."
Atley scowls upward. "Mind that bloody amber." He raises his shield preemptively.
"Amber alchemy," Kenelly muses quietly. "Under other circumstances, I'd be quite intrigued."
"I bet we could preserve some cool things with that," Peixin nods. "Make some great little souvenirs to sell."
Arric makes a vague, unhappy sound.
Atley grunts. "After."
The squad fights through more warriors as they make their way outside of the Hollowed Out Tree.
"More fighters, here," Atley points out.
Arric sends Stormy in.
As the mantid fall, Atley looks around. "Kenelly — find us a way out of here."
Kenelly nods and plants her hand on the wood floor.
She winces, contacting the sickened tree. But her eyes open, faintly glowing green. "This way. A passage has been blocked."
Kenelly points to the amber filling a space. "Through there."
"Good show!" Arric says as Kenelly leads them to the passage.
Peixin's eyes widen slightly. "Whoa, nice job."
Atley flattens a gauntlet against the Hardened Resin. "We'll have to break it, I warrant."
Arric aims his rifle.
"You're the muscles Dane, I'll let you handle the wall-breaking!" Peixin beams.
Atley winds up and drives Thunderfury's dragon-bone-spiked pommel against the resin, shattering it.
"The temple!" Kenelly yips excitedly.
"Oh… dear…" Arric says, going pale as he sees the state of the temple.
Outside, among the rubble of the broken wall, pandaren battle a mantid warrior.
Peixin eyes the temple in worry.
"Let's get in there and give them some help!" Atley booms.
When the mantid falls, one of the pandaren turns to them. “Thank you, heroes, for the save. We escaped the mantid cages, but we’re still stuck in the middle of their swarm. There are too many for us to take head on.”
“Hm,” says the pandaren. “I have an idea that just might work, but we’re going to need your help. Let’s give these mantid a taste of their own medicine!”
"What did you have in mind?" Kenelly asks.
“Li and Lo, get the sap into position!” the smaller pandaren directs, and the other two begin lining up kegs of sap along the edge of the platform.
Atley looks over the edge. "The kegs…?" he mutters.
Li and Lo get into position, laying out mantid tar kegs.
Peixin picks up a keg and playfully throws it at approaching mantids.
Arric heaves a keg of sap at the mantids, then aims his gun again.
Atley lifts a keg and sends it flying. It shatters on top of the heads of mantid warriors.
Below. Commander Vo'Jak shrieks. "They are holding us off! Bring in the air support!" Just then, an aerial mantid arrives, flinging glaives at the Cobalt and Pandaren group.
Kenelly cannot help a little giggle as she hurls a keg and splatters sticky sap all over the mantid below.
Arric leaps backward just in time to avoid a glaive.
Peixin catches a glaive that was thrown at her and sends it back to the sender.
"Take down the fliers!" Atley roars, beheading one sticky mantid that managed to make it past.
Arric is well equipped to take down fliers. Stormy, not so much. She snarls in frustration.
Commander Vo'jak shrieks. "Pah! Those who failed deserved to die; you have merely culled the weak! I must finish myself, then… So be it!" The towering mantid charges up the stairs, uninhibited by the sap.
"Come and get it then…" Atley growls, charging the Commander as he arrives, shield raised high.
Stormy is delighted to have something to attack.
Kenelly steps back, casting a brief ritual to coax up a magical mushroom from the ground, its spores enhancing the flow of nature magic to her and her friends.
Peixin slides down the railing and back stabs the commander.
"Capital!" Arric yells at Peixin.
Commander Vo'jak falls. Atley briefly eyes the corpse before he looks down at the grounds. "There. Pandaren in cages. Get them freed, then we move on!"
"Of course!" says Arric.
Peixin frowns in incomprehension at Arric's comment to her. "Stormwind?"
"It's an expression. It means he approves of wot's going on," Atley explains to Peixin, smashing through a cage's lock.
"There there, you're free now," Arric says encouragingly to the pandaren prisoner.
"Oh, okay!" Peixin beams. "Capital to you too, Arric."
“Here!” calls Yang Ironclaw. “This gate is locked, but I have something that will open it.” He affixes an explosive to the gate. “Let’s see, thirty second fuse….”
Arric beams at Peixin!
Arric backs up rapidly.
Atley raises his shield.
The explosive detonates, blasting the gate open. Yang leaps back, sheepish and slightly singed. “Ah. Three second fuse. Go! Stop the siege!”
Peixin backs up too.
Atley slowly lowers his shield and glowers at Yang before he turns to the squad. "Let's move."
As the squad progresses, they hear yet another shrieking mantid. "Niuzao's forces attack from the rear!"
Atley points with Thunderfury. "There. We've got to take out the siege weapons. They're raining hell on the temple!"
"As you say, Lieutenant!"
Arric frees a few more prisoners.
Atley raises [The Lion Horn of Stormwind] and issues a long, bellowing note for all.
At the end of the yard before the bridge, an armored mantid in shoulder armor that can be seen from space paces back and forth. He is clearly the general.
"There. That'll be the head of the snake," Atley growls.
One of the Sith'ik Vanguard nearly tosses Arric onto his ass. Luckily Arric is more agile than he looks, and manages to keep his feet.
Peixin appears behind one of the cages and frees a fellow pandaren.
"Mind that blade of his. Bring him down. Then we rescue all the others!" Atley yells.
"Of course!" says Arric.
The massive form of General Pa'valak swings around and brandishes his sword. "I will crush you!" he chitters.
Arric pales at the sheer size of the guy.
Atley narrows his eyes and blows through [The Lion Horn of Stormwind] once again before he charges in. He's brought to his knee by the first strike from the General.
Arric backs up, letting Stormy harry the General as he picks out shots, but the General spots him and charges over, dealing him a blow that knocks him flat.
"Dane!" Peixin says. She shadowsteps behind the General. She runs along the mantid's back at full speed, and stabs her daggers into its back.
Away from the corrupted tree, Kenelly finds it much easier to draw upon the land to empower her nature magic.
"No!" Atley booms, charging in to reconnect with the General, slicing through carapace with Thunderfury.
Arric regains his feet quickly, though he's white as a sheet. He takes three deep breaths before aiming his gun again.
"Enough of this! Reinforcements!" General Pa'valak shrieks. Shadows dart across the ground as flying mantid take to the skies, and drop explosives all over the area surrounding the General.
"Eyes up!" Atley warns with a yell.
Peixin jumps up between Kenelly and Arric and throws a smoke bomb, covering them from the sight of the many mantids approaching.
Atley is knocked around by two subsequent explosions, but he manages to keep his feet just in time to see a swarm of grounded mantid charge from uphill, buzzing and chittering.
Arric spots a swarm of approaching mantid soldiers, and his eyes widen. Quickly he adjusts a setting on his gun, and as the swarm approaches a barrage of bullets flies out of it, allowing him to pepper them with wounds all at once.
Kenelly yelps in pain when an explosive detonates near her, leaving her arm bleeding. She presses her clawed hand to the wound, tendrils of green energy stitching it back together. She has only moments to tend herself; her friends still need her!
Atley cries out with exertion and slams the ground with Thunderfury, unleashing a shockwave directly into the ranks of the oncoming soldiers, just as the General winds up and smashes at his shield.
"Lady Kenelly!" Arric cries out in alarm, forgetting to drop the title in his distress. But once he sees the healer has healed herself, he focuses on firing into the fray again.
Peixin shoots down the flying mantids with shuriken.
Stormy leaps from mantid to mantid like a fiend, snarling and ripping.
After the reinforcements are slain, Atley turns back to General Pa'valak and slices off a mandible in a swift riposte. "Bring him down!"
Arric gives the order to Stormy, and she charges in.
About the third time Arric gets charged at range, he decides to shoot from closer.
Eventually, General Pa'valak falls, slain. "Forgive me… Empress…!"
Atley inhales slowly and looks to others. "All sorted?"
Kenelly nods, panting…with her tongue out. So undignified.
Arric gives Kenelly a friendly pat on the back.
Peixin nods. "I am!" She is barely able to hide that she's panting.
Arric gives Peixin a pat also.
Arric understands that ladies are just delicate sometimes.
Atley looks over General Pa'valak's giant body. "There. The bridge. Some are still alive…"
The way to the broken bridge is clear. Mantid builders swarm over it; towering jars of amber, presumably for the building, make a labyrinth of the bridge.
"We can't let them reconstruct this. It'll give them a direct line to the Temple," Atley says.
"Ready on your command," says Arric.
"That's why we should only build rope bridges for now. Imagine how easy it'd be to get them all to fall," Peixin sighs. Things could be much simpler.
"Right. With me!" Atley says, charging up the steps, two and three at a time to engage the builders.
"Stormy… attack!" Arric cries. Stormy obeys with gusto.
At the very edge of the bridge, standing on the new amber surface that stretches out over the chasm, a mantid awaits them. His shoulder armor is surprisingly modest, but he has an extremely fancy big hat.
Arric works his way through the maze of jars, shooting at anything that moves.
"Is that the leader?" Arric whispers.
"One of them…" Atley theorizes with a squint. "We must've just slayed the general."
“You may have come this far!” he shrieks. “You may have cut a path through my army! But now you face me! I will kill you, and I will build this bridge!”
"Probably," Peixin tilts her head. "I'm not seeing anyone else anyway."
"Oh a structural engineer, perhaps," Arric theorizes after it yells at them.
Atley charges in and thrusts at Wing Leader Ner'onok with Thunderfury, teeth grit.
Peixin sprints at Wing Leader, before disappearing and reappearing behind him. She slides on the floor and slices at the mantid's ankles.
Arric seems less intimidated by a structural engineer.
Wing Leader Ner-onok lifts off and flies to the other end of the bridge!
Wing Leader Ner'onok yells. "I will do what Pa'valak could not!"
Suddenly, the squad is hit with a brutal windshift, freezing them in place even while they run at full speed. It inches them closer and closer to the edge of the unfinished bridge.
"Well that's irritating," says Arric. "Come on, Stormy."
Arric fights the gale, guiding his wolf companion as well, as the poor creature has no idea what to do with the wind.
"WHAT?" Peixin says, not hearing what Arric said because of the wind.
Kenelly yelps in annoyance, and tries to conjure up her own forceful winds to counter Ner'onok's. But it's a little hard to focus when you're nearly being blown off a bridge.
Atley angles his shield into the wind and winds up with Thunderfury, slicing through enough of the torrent to generate a vacuum to carry him closer as they weave through the maze to reconnect with the Wing Leader.
Arric grabs onto a jar of amber to steady himself as he's nearly blown away.
Stormy sticks close to Arric's side, and he grabs her whenever she starts to get blown away. It seems that he is safely allowed to touch her.
Once the gale ends, and the team gets a few hits in, Ner'onok merely repositions to the other side and does the same thing. "Press —!" is the last thing Atley's able to get out before he's helplessly drowned out by winds.
Arric yells something about being very put out.
Peixin screams. "WHAT?!"
Peixin tries to throw a few shuriken at the Wing Leader. Of course, with the strong wind, they don't go very far.
Stormy seems delighted when she finally reunites with her hated nemesis, the flying bug.
Arric finds a wall to steady his back against so the wind cannot blow him out of shooting range.
Peixin disappears and reappears once more behind the mantid. She leaps up, and stabs the enemy in his wings, making sure he can't fly away again.
"Good show!" Arric yells, since "capital" confused her. This is probably not less confusing.
Atley winds up, leaps forward, and with a savage roar, slices a leg off of the Wing Leader, sending the exoskeletal limb clattering away across the amber bridge.
Atley looks down at the corpse with a frown before he raises his gaze and looks to the others.
Arric shoots it a few more times. To make sure.
Atley doesn't protest.
Shado-Master Chum Kiu materializes behind them. “Masterfully done,” he says, and bows. “We would not have succeeded without you.”
"We couldn't have done it without you accompanying us every step of the way!" Peixin beams.
Arric jumps about a foot in the air and turns his gun on the Shado-Master for just a moment before lowering it, embarrassed.
Atley inclines his head to Shado-Master Chum Kiu. "The temple's safe."
Atley looks to the squad. "We've fought well here. Not just here, but the Steppes. We've pacified the yaungol, stopped the mantid incursions short, and have proven to be true allies to the Shado-Pan."
Arric beams with pride.
Atley refocuses on Peixin. "To think when we met those many months ago in Jade Forest, that trail would bring us here." He gestures around.
Arric smiles warmly at the two of them.
"Yeah," Peixin smiles. "Can't believe you're all still here, too!"
"And if someone had told us when we met in Westfall…" Arric smiles at Kenelly.
Atley looks between them, thumbs cinched in his belt.
Kenelly's gravelly chuckles softens to a musical lilt as she transforms back into human shape. "Indeed. I did not then imagine myself an adventurer!"
"Thank you all, so very much," Arric says sincerely.
"Let's get out of here, mm?" Atley suggests, looking between them.
"Of course!" says Arric.
"Agreed!" Nelly nods eagerly.
"Are you kidding me?" Peixin tells Kenelly. "You adventured the HECK out of our time together. You've even learned the greatest lesson of all. To let us see your teeth when you laugh!"
"She's a point," Atley says of Peixin to Kenelly.
Kenelly laughs…and immediately covers her mouth, blushing.
"Okay, Dane, take her on squad for your next mission, she still has much to learn," Peixin points her thumb at Kenelly.