Chapter Six, The Storm.
It was finally time, I have been waiting for this for years now and I finally get to really let loose. The constant fights with endbringers back on Earth Bet spoiled me when it came to decent fights and it has been so long since I have been able to do much more than meetings and a few tiny skirmishes.
I'm really hoping that the hordes in the strongest fortress of the orcs on the planet will be able to help me burn off some of this frustration. I doubt it will be much of a challenge but hopefully it will help me scratch this itch I've had slowly growing since I settled down here in Drachenhohle.
My twenty thousand soldiers, armed with weapons and armor crafted by smiths to their utmost, stood at the ready and waiting for me to just say the word to start marching towards the Black Crag. My mages were mounted up on their horses, gathered off to the side as they talked amongst themselves. The cannons were prepped and hooked up already, now it was time for me to give the word and this tiny but mighty army of mine would march to help me wage war on the green mushroom menace.
Sitting on Bob in front of the men and women, I raised Clarent high and shouted. "Men, Women, you know why we are gathered here and have waited long enough. We set forth today for the Black Crag, to destroy the greatest stronghold of the greenskins, to reclaim the lost hold of the dwarfs, Karak Drazh. And, we set forth now!" And as one, my army surged forward towards whatever their destiny may be, with myself at the helm.
Staying behind was tens of thousands more troops, the vast majority of the mages, Ulrich and Cobbelly, and the few cannons I left behind and all of the mortars. Mortars in small underground passages doesn't sound like a great idea to me. Cobbelly and Ulrich had wanted to come along but I needed them to stay behind and act as regent for me and take care of the paperwork that would be breeding as I was away.
In fact, the only big name advisor I am bringing with me is Stark. I have others I've worked with before and across the years but I've never had much of a connection to them much like I am with most people. I just have this mental disconnect or something with other people where I can get along great with them but I could count those who I was truly friends with on a single hand with fingers left over.
Urgh, I really should learn to avoid such topics, it's depressing and not at all fun to think about. So in a totally different topic, the journey over to the Black Crag was taking a bit. It's been a while since we set out and I have been having to restrain myself from dashing ahead just in case I need to deal with some orcs wandering by.
Most of my days are really just hanging out with my command staff or other mages to talk shop, Stark being the one I spent most of my time with since he was both part of my command staff and the one in charge of all the mages with us. The Aegis of Mordred was one of the main topics of discussion, mostly because part of the plan was to set one up in Karak Drazh to aid the men in protecting the land we reclaimed.
The spell wasn't all that great outside of when Morrslieb appeared overhead, during which the defensive boost ranged from very thick leather armor to a full suit of knight armor. But when it was just any other day, it was at best, mediocre leather armor and at worst equal to lightly padded clothing. Still, every bit counted and it did protect all sensitive parts of the body equally from the genitals to your eyes, it covered them.
Of course, it takes specialized equipment and takes a fair amount of time and skilled mages working together to make a single set which is part of the reason that we only now have over eighty percent of all settlements in the Drachenruhe province covered in the Aegises of Mordred despite having over two years to do so.
Which meant that it was only practical on the battlefield if we were in a fortified location and had the time and ability for five or more mages working together over multiple hours to do the initial casting. And if we weren't chasing something down because the whole setup is rather stationary and does not do fast extensions if you like being alive and living without portals to the Realm of Chaos capable of letting sixty four bloodthirsters come through.
I only let that happen once and never again, there was so much Chaos corruption and cleansing I had to do to fix things, it was not a good time, it was rather fortunate that we do all of our testing in remote areas so we don't accidentally destroy everything.
The only reason why we were even going to use it in this case is because the whole point of the army coming with me is to blockade the front door and leave a place for me to safely rest in between slaughtering the greenskins. They weren't going to be doing much outside of that since twenty thousand soldiers had no way of holding the entirety of the fortress that houses hundreds of thousands of greenskins even with a couple dozen of the best non-dwarf artillery humanly possible and the support of over a dozen mages.
Perhaps it was a little much for me to keep obsessing over this but I was really looking forward to it albeit I was worrying almost as much over bringing this army with me. I know it was the best choice and if I just went by myself then they would be left wondering if I pulled a Sigmar or something and a whole host of moral issues and such would pop up but it's hard not to worry about the men and women I had promised to protect who can't even face a bloodthirster on their own.
They're just so squishy, I knew intellectually my logic was a bit warped but it was hard enough to keep a level head when you're a walking weapon of mass destruction, capable of applying exterminatus levels of power to entire countries and making massive passageways between mountain ranges via sheer force. Hell, I could probably level everything down to the bedrock in a week or so by just spamming Clarent Heir Mordred.
When it comes to things like bloodthirsters and other greater daemons, it is just so far below my level that everything seems to be made of wet tissue paper and I have to use so much of my physical control not to avoid accidentally walking through a wall without noticing. I was used to it by now after fifteen years of practice but it still frustrates me from time to time and was probably another reason why I was so excited to be able to cut loose soon.
Though, I was getting a little satisfaction nowadays as we journeyed to the east to the Black Crag, there were tons of orcs in the badlands and they needed cleansing in order for us to make our way through. Naturally it fell to me to make sure they weren't going to be a problem and chip away at our combat viability over the long walk.
So, as we made our way across the badlands and towards one of the beating hearts of greenskin civilization, I was constantly casting my Master Bolt spell as we traveled, it was rare that a day went by without me blasting a few orcs or goblins wandering by. At this rate, the greenskins might assemble a waaagh and come knocking while we were clearing out Black Crag… One of these days I should figure out how to make a magic cell phone, just the ability to call someone in case of an emergency would be great.
Eh, I just had to check in every few hours to make sure they were fine, they should be able to hold out that long with no problem, I hope. Ugh, this happens every time, I start thinking about something and just keep driving myself further and further up the wall into a frenzy. One day, I will be able to think about something without constantly going over it.
After what felt like an eternity later, we were near the Black Crag. Scouts were scurrying around, trying to figure out all of the possible threats that needed to be dealt with. There was officers racing back and forth, rallying the men underneath them. The cannoniers were arranging their ammunition and black powder to be easy to access, yet not going to explode all over everyone.
I studied as much as I could, looking at the crag from a distance so that I could know when and where to strike. My assault was going to be the lynchpin of this entire operation. If I screwed it up, a lot of my men were going to die if not all of them.
I may have underestimated exactly how many greenskins there would be and the sheer size of the entire fortress. When you hear the word mountain, you think of a single solitary peak right? When you describe a dwarf hold you think of something like the front gates of Erebor right? Well, I forgot that I now live in a warhammer universe where everything is over the top.
The so called fortress was actually closer to an enclosure with massive stone walls with a bunch of wooden constructs jutting out of everything. And also spikes, lots and lots of wooden spikes everywhere. It actually reminded me quite a bit of a larger version of Orgrimmar from World of Warcraft if not for there being no massive bone spikes but the amount of wooden ones made up for that in spades.
There were long spanning rope bridges and streamers across the entire mountain range, interconnecting each piece with each other. A small lake surrounded by wooden spikes held what seemed to be some sort of tunnel to the underground. It was thankfully not too hard to find out where the front gate was, not when the clearly defaced dwarf statues were standing on either side of it.
Of course, the sheer size of it all means far more space for mushroom farming and greenskins to grow. It was amazing how many greenskins can fit inside this whole space, the earlier number of hundreds of thousands was now likely a tenth of what was truly here, millions was the best guess of the true horde that lived here. And that didn't take into account any reinforcements that would come for the battle.
A few hundred thousand orcs, tens of thousands of them black. Most likely millions of goblins and snotlings. tens of thousands of various mounted cavalry, hundreds, possibly thousands of rock lobbing artillery. It was a place suicidal to attack without an army that was double the size of the defenders in any normal situation. The idea a small group of dwarfs could retake this was laughable and my own group even more so, if not for one factor. Me.
Don't get me wrong, it wasn't going to be a total walk in the park. I still had limits to my stamina, mental, physical, and magical. There was no denying that I was going to have to spam my master bolt spell everywhere at maximum power right from the start and that takes a lot of energy. I was also going to have to do it at an inhumanly rapid speed, not something I like doing since well… It was inhuman and I didn't particularly like feeling or thinking of myself that way.
To say I don't have time to react to something in this world would be a massive lie. When I moved at my highest speeds, I was not seeing everything in a blur, I was seeing everything as if they were in slow motion. My perception of time speeds up as my body speeds up, allowing me to act as if I was just going on a stroll when in reality I was moving so fast that they can't even react as they topple over after I cut them in half.
This level of speed was available to me on demand but it was isolating and not really what I want to experience for very long albeit very useful when I need more time to think on something without anyone noticing. In this case, I was going to have to use all of my casting ability to make use of the free magical energy in the air and make potentially hundreds of full power bolts of lightning.
And I had to do this at close enough distance that the orcs could charge me with their cavalry. On the other hand, it's not like I couldn't also blast anyone charging straight at me with lightning as I did my thing. For this, I had to leave Bob behind. He was good for morale but he was far, far too slow.
The plan laid out was this, I would go to a place where I had good lines of sight of the area and then start casting. As I cast, I would bombard all of the surface structures within range to prevent the greenskins from hampering my forces from fighting their way to the interior.
At which point I stop blasting everything and dash to the front gate of the former dwarf hold and open it up in time for all of my troops to get there. And while they are filtering in, I'll clear out the entrance hall so they can set up shop and I can get a move on towards the rest of the interior. There would be a big ass horn to toot if they need my help and it should echo into most of the corridors in the underground but maybe not.
With the plan that was really more of an outline depending entirely on me to be as brokenly powerful as possible ready, I went to my chosen position for this battle. It was a section of wide open ground made of mostly rocks and dust, a terrible place for most people on foot when faced with the horde in front of them but almost perfect for me.
I stood there in my shiny silver armor, still perfectly fitting me despite having grown a solid inch taller over these last fifteen years of life. I was already attracting some attention from the orcs but it was far too late for them as I began casting. Accelerating my perception of time, the world entered slow motion with the exception of myself. Took hold of the winds of magic swirling around the land, directing them into combining was a task I was far more familiar with after the past five years.
In a mere few subjective seconds, I was channeling high magic and shaping it into one of my favorite spells. Bolts of thick lightning appeared in the sky above me one after another, speeding up, faster and faster. By the time the greenskins could react to the sudden appearance of my spell, I was almost done with my first volley. The winds were starting to strain under the demands I was forcing upon them as I took more and more energy from the surrounding area.
Finally with hundreds of bolts at the ready, I unleashed them. In a flash, the first dozen bolts crashed into the greenskin ranks, vaporizing many, the rest leaving blackened husks. There was likely tens of thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands dead in that first volley and I was nowhere near finished.
With as much precision as I could use, I spaced out and fired bolts, one by one. Wooden walls and housing blasted apart as splinters slaughtered those who survived the initial blast of lightning. The exposed stone of the mountains was glowing from the heat of the blasts, pieces of the ground fused into clumps of crystal.
When people talked about being a walking weapon of mass destruction, I wasn't sure they really understood the true experience of being such. Ozones from the electrified air clogged my nose, I was constantly squinting as bright flashes of light occurred over and over again as I continued my assault on what passes for the greenskin capital. It was a state of constant irritation as I slowly walked towards the front gate of the ruins of Karak Drazh.
As I slowed my assault down to the current flow of the winds, I watched as my own forces did their best to run over in incredibly slow motion. Well, so far it didn't look like the greenskins were going to mount a counter assault judging by the corpses littering the ground. Personally I think I made an overall improvement to the curb appeal of the whole place.
Neat looking crystals glittered in the morning light, the dimming glow of the rocks wasn't a bad touch. I got rid of almost all of the wood tones the place had and there was suddenly very little of that hideous green in the surrounding area. Maybe a little too much crystal to pass on HGTV but nothing's perfect.
I cleared a path for my soldiers before turning towards the front gate, patchwork repairs from repeated sieges from greenskins fighting over the ruins of the hold make up more than half of the gates now. But even now, I could tell it was a grand sight in the past, likely yet another reason why dwarfs are so fixated on their past.
Just a pair of bolts smashed down the greenskin gates as I moved towards them, rubble scattered across the ground as my sprint let me see inside the hall itself. Even more greenskins and their ramshackle buildings were all over the place, something I took care of by blasting apart. Debris falls all over the place yet again, as my go to spell of mass destruction clears out the green menace.
With the beachhead clear, I moved to the entrance again and let my time dilation drop back down to normal. That didn't stop me from casting a few more bolts at anything that moved but it did help get the soldiers finally start moving at a decent pace. Still took some time for them to start entering the hold proper and by now I was actually starting to notice a slight amount of fatigue from casting so much high magic.
Luckily with all of the sensitive stuff in the middle, the infantry all around that, and the cavalry escorting them in between running down anything that gets too close for comfort, they made reasonable time. The hard work begins now for theme.
Wreckage starts being cleared and piled off into makeshift walls as everyone trails in, cannons position themselves to guard every tunnel and my archers pick their best places. Cavalry set up a rest stop for the moments in between their raids on greenskin lines outside. The melee infantry linked up to blockade any passages in or out of the entrance hall we were in now.
I was running around and making sure nothing was going wrong so I could run headlong into danger. Stark and the mages under him were already setting up the Aegis, although there were a couple comments on how much energy I drained from the area weakening the overall effect.
Finally, it was time for me to go into the dark tunnels of this infested fortress and remove the infestation. I had actually pushed myself with the magic I was slinging around and now it was time to physically exert myself to my fullest.
I started by maxing out my time dilation and then moving through the tunnels, the first one I went into showed that the greenskins were starting to rally from my blitz. As I ran down the corridor, I tried to ignore the feeling of running through water as I dashed towards the now prepared greenskins.
Goblins and orcs held their weapons at the ready to face me in the dark pathways of the karak, likely alerted by the deafening roars of the wind within the passages as I traveled at supersonic speed. Small bits of rock and dust were flung around at high speed as I used my speed to rocket towards my targets.
I reached the first goblin and stepped past the practically frozen spear point to slice its head off, turning sharply, I cut the one to its side in half before stabbing the orc behind them in the face. As their bodies started to comply with gravity, I made my move on the rest of them. A goblin here, an orc there, more and more I killed until they were all very much dead. The roaring wind following behind me was splattering the gore onto the walls as I sped past, looking for more to kill.
Sending my mana across my body, I quickly accelerated using my Mana Boost and found yet another pack of greenskins to dismantle. This went on for hours and hours as I went into a steady routine. It only took half an hour to dismantle any surface dwelling greenskins and clear out the remaining greenskins.
The encampment set up in the entrance hall was always busy as I passed through, archers and cannons working together to safely thin out the greenskins attacking. Ammunition slowly dwindled as they fired round after round, to the point it was declared they would have to avoid firing on anything below a certain number of enemy troops and allow the infantry a chance to shine. Some of the archers waiting around had taken to crafting simple wooden arrows that while terrible quality, were not banned from using as it wasn't dipping into our combat readiness.
It was hours later that I surfaced for the last time that day. I had crushed my way through the first three levels of the ten I was aware of but it was taking a lot longer the deeper I went down. It was a maze down there and it would take tedious slow searching to find every last trace of the mushrooms.
But for now I had to rest, I had been going full tilt for several hours and it was starting to affect my ability to fight. It was not by much but when you started running full tilt into spears because you forgot they were there from mental fatigue, it was time to take a power nap.
Casualties were lighter than expected, surprising since our enemy had far more numbers than expected. That still left several hundred dead and over a thousand wounded, luckily, the first few hours were almost always the most intense when it came to the greenskins. They didn't typically have a lot of patience so if we were going to get into a waiting game, it didn't last much longer than the first few hours with how greenskins thought.
The warboss must have died at some point because many of the greenskins were fighting between each other when I found them. It was rather typical, I seemed to always end up killing the warboss without even noticing and most often when they were lumped together with other greenskins. It was rather conflicting, on one side it didn't matter since I would curbstomp them just as much in melee. But the other side of it is that it would be really cool to experience the epic duel between leaders as their armies fight around them.
I shook my head of these stray thoughts as I reached the command tent. I wanted to check in on the situation before taking my nap and going full tilt again, and I do mean nap. A minute was equal to an hour's worth of sleep for me when it came to mentally and physically recharging. Recharging magically was different but when isn't magic different from reality?
As the tent flap closed behind me, I took stock of the command staff I had left in charge while I was having fun smashing through the ranks of the greenskins. Ida Weinstein who was acting as my second in command for everything not magic seemed to be doing well even if she looked stressed. Stark was also here and was in a discussion with Weinstein while pointing at the icon for the front gates.
"It should be possible for our mages to form earthen banks across this section but they aren't going to be as strong as we need them to be. A trio of elementalists could- Ah! Your highness, welcome back!" Stark said as he took notice of me, not bothering with the usual bow as I had demanded given we were in a military setting and not my throne room.
"Welcome back, your highness. We were just discussing how to shore up the front entrance since the gates no longer exist. What brings you back so soon? I had thought that it would take a few more hours to tire you out." Weinstein asked while handing off coins to Stark's smugly waiting hand.
Did they really place a bet on how long I would last before taking a break? Seriously? This is a life or death situation and they're making bets on how long I was capable of fighting? Well… Since they seemed to be doing a good job otherwise and had just been doing their jobs when I walked, I'll chock it up to stress relief and gallows humor until they show me otherwise.
"Well, I had started making mistakes like forgetting not to run headlong into a spear so I decided to take a small break to get my head on straight again. The spear didn't even scrape my armor but to keep going while making mistakes like that isn't a good idea even if they haven't been able to harm me yet." I told them deadpan, my helmet in my hands as I watched their exchange.
The faces around me sober a bit at the fact I am indeed mortal, extremely powerful but still a mortal being. Oh, and the fact I, their princess, did something that would have instantly killed any one of them if they had done it and how fortunate they were I was who I am and not a squishy purebred human like the rest of them.
Wow, ego much? I just realized how that sounded and I was really glad now I didn't say that out loud. It's a good thing I came in to take my nap, that should set me straight. I spent the next hour going over things with Weinstein and Stark. First off, the Aegis was up and running, the protection was on the weaker side of things but it was gradually getting stronger.
Many of the ranged units we had were now forbidden from combat as long as the number of greenskins stayed low. The soldiers fighting with sword, pike, and halberd were doing well, minimal deaths and the wounded were easily treated by the small number of healing mages with us.
The greenskins were rallying outside and in a few hours, were going to try and assault the front gates it seemed. Unfortunately they were being cunning and not brutal this time around and were hiding in the neighboring mountain walls to prevent me from just blasting them with lightning before they got a proper fight. Meaning unless I was willing to wait them out, I was just going to have to trust my entire army to not get slaughtered by what was most likely a bunch of goblins.
Time dragged on by, I spent the next day interchanging between helping the cavalry run down packs of greenskins on the surface to cut down on the attrition rates of my forces and clearing out the next two floors, leaving me at five out of ten floors cleared. The following five days had me clear a floor once per day, until I reached the bottom where an ongoing war between skaven and greenskin was happening.
This tenth floor was something I couldn't clear out by myself without far too much time spent on it. Instead I changed my goals and started hunting down all the ways into the hold as I sealed each and every one shut. I then split my forces, leaving four tenths at the ninth level to guard there, another four tenths at the top level to guard there, and the remaining to make sure nothing is reopening the holes we just closed off.
I was really starting to hope the dwarfs got here soon because our supplies were going to run low enough that we would be forced to run home to not starve to death. It was as I once again beat down some goblins trying to sneak across the cliffs that I saw them. With banners flying high, armor and weapons gleaming in the afternoon sun, the dwarfs had finally shown up.
A rough estimate told me that the dwarfs had arrived with twice the numbers we had originally came here with, forty thousand heavily armed dwarfs was definitely a force to be reckoned with. Although, I doubt they would have managed to do much considering the sheer numbers involved even if they would have given it a good shot.
Jumping straight down, I land with a thud and cracking stone. I took a brisk jog over to join the greeting party for the dwarfs. It didn't take very long for me to arrive in front of the dwarf army. Greetings were swapped between myself and the confused dwarfs, eventually leading to me being in front of their leader, Thane Neldogg Truefist.
After a few apologies for forgetting to mention we were going on ahead and leaving them to think we forsook our oaths of aid, the dwarfs swept in and started taking over the guarding of the hold. It was all a blur from there as we were giving a large feast for retaking almost all of the hold by ourselves and there was a lot of drinking involved and "impromptu rendezvous" all over the place.
I, myself, had gotten in one with Ida and Anders which we all agreed never happened the morning after. Of course, the dwarfs were very happy to toss us out afterwards and we started making our way back home.
Weeks later, we arrived home in Drachenhohle, pieces of my army splintering away as we passed by their homes. The entire journey had Bob acting overprotective of me, being confused by Ida, and glaring at Anders. Which I suppose would make sense but was rather inconvenient when we had meetings near Bob which was fairly often when we traveled a lot on horseback.
It was when I finally entered my throne room that I held court and sat down that a messenger ran in, quite panicked and seemed to be relieved as he saw me. Dashing forward he knelt before my throne and told me.
"Your highness! Terrible news, almost all of the other border princes have combined their forces together and have declared war upon all of Drachenruhe!" He yelled.
Well… Shit.
Chapter End.
Arc Two End.
It's a bit late, but I hope the wait was worth it. Edit: Character Sheet has been updated.