warforged | your hands protect the flames

Entry tags:

your hands protect the flames

Who: The Dragonsworn
What: The first arrival of the Dragonsworn goes a bit...awry.
Where: Scattered around the perimeter of Suramar.
When: Dawn on March 21st
Warnings: Please PM the mods if any warnings are needed

It is almost as if you've woken from a daydream when the ground meets your feet. The stench of fire is overpowering, and though dawn is just approaching in the canopies of Kalimdor, bright flashes of green can be seen between the branches of impossibly tall trees. If that doesn't snap you out of your surprise, then the sound of nearby spitting in demonic tongue may persuade you to get a grip and notice your surroundings -- you are not alone. There are others like you, huddled just a bit too close, with a somewhat familiar face keeping you from advancing further. Looking down at your hands may briefly reveal a momentary flash of color, but nothing lasting more than a few seconds.

The mages of each flight take the helm of their charges, and they are quick to notice any movement from their groups despite channeling some sort of spell to keep you protected. Stray fire will bounce off an invisible shield that ripples when anything make contact with it. There seems to be nothing in sight but your new comrades, and your guardian -- at least not on the ground. The sky has flying demons swarming a pack of dragons -- and the dragons are very clearly losing. Look just a bit farther, and you might find more dragons, though these clearly have different colored scales than the ones above your head.

While distracted, you may hear your guardian speak to you. "There may yet be wounded nearby -- if you care to, bring them here, and we will tend to them from the Sanctum." Briefly, they gesture skyward, toward the dragons flying overhead. "Do not bring to us any that are not our own, lest you invite their demise!"

But the mage is focused on casting -- they are in no position to halt your advance, and they know it. They speak with concern -- concern for you, concern for the dire situation at hand. The demonic cackling is drawing near. The forests are rapidly becoming overrun, and there are already a few dragons slain on the forest floor.

"Take care, Dragonsworn -- I am bringing us to safety, but it will take time. To wander far is to invite your ruin, and we cannot afford the loss of your life."

[OOC: You are free to mingle on this post as you choose, despite the flight groups being scattered through the forests around Suramar -- after this log, you will be separated into your sanctums, and your interactions will be watched much more closely. Attempting to enter the city itself will result in a vicious attack from demons that will kill. The Dragon Mages will be tagging sporadically to heroes of their matching flight, and the conclusion of this log will lead Dragonsworn through portals to their Sanctums.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

This was a power of mailboxes Nepeta had been completely unaware of, and now she wished she could talk to Terezi about it.

She nodded at his instructions. "Okay. You draw their attention while I claw them down furrom behind, right?" She was getting used to this plan of attack quite quickly, she thought. Ambush seemed like a great plan in general.

"You've grasped the basics quite admirably. And, uh, try to avoid Shadowstepping to the enemies when they're at range. That usually means they start clawing you instead of me, and I think we'd both rather have me taking the injuries here than you."

His ability to deliver this mini-speech while dragging a dragon was testament to his stamina more than his strength.

"Shadowstepping? Oh, that must be what they call popping up behind the enemy like that, right? I'm not sure I can control that yet... the last time it just happened beclaws I wanted to be close so I could deal with them. I guess I'll try to avoid wanting that too hard until I get it under better control."

She didn't really question the name. It was pretty obvious, really, being able to appear in the enemy's shadow. Of course it didn't work so well if the shadow was in front of the enemy rather than behind them, but maybe you could use something else's shadow? She could really use a full briefing on this sort of thing.

"That would probably be a good idea." She'd at least grasped this concept pretty quickly, unlike some people who cheerfully charged on ahead and then blamed him for their inevitable woundings. "Also, while I'd appreciate you not trying this while helping me haul a giant reptile around, you'll probably find that when enemies aren't engaging you, you can sneak around them fairly effectively."

That would, in her opinion, qualify someone for the "complete tactical idiot" title.

"I see. Even when there shouldn't be anything I can hide in?" Sneaking and pouncing at opportune moments were things she was intimately familiar with, but usually one needed things like cover.

Mar nodded, failing to consider whether or not she could see the gesture when his head was somewhere underneath a dragon. "Stay out of large flares and you'll be fine."

They passed beneath the shield at last, and with a groan, Mar practically let the dragon flop, then crawled out from beneath it, breath coming in heavy pants. "What's following us?" he said between breaths. "How's the shield holding?"

"There doesn't seem to be much behind-"

And in the middle of her sentence, a roar from the forest announces the arrival of a pit lord, clomping out onto the battlefield and looking around for something, probably the dragon they just dragged to safety.

She gulped.

"Um. On second thought, there's defurnitely something down there. It's huge, it's got four legs and a huge bladed weapon, its face looks like it's mostly teeth..."

"Oh. That's wonderful. Here's the plan."

He picked himself up, one hand resting on the wounded dragon's side for support. Why was he so tired?

"You get back to safety with the others, where they're gathering the portal."

That was it. That was the plan.

"Wait what?"

That was her immediate reaction. She turned to him, jaw agape.

"You aren't seriously planning to fight that thing! Espurrcially not on your own!"

Mar shook his head. "Define 'planning'. My hope is that the shield will stay up and prevent it from getting in and attacking. If it falls, that's when I stand honorably at this dragon's side and attempt to save its life."

"Throwing your life away won't help it! You're no match fur that thing-"

Her aggravation suddenly evaporated as an idea suddenly came to her. She looked back over her shoulder at the group. It wasn't that far, really.

"Alone..."

The shield had to hold long enough for this at least. She turned and dropped to all fours, bolting back towards the portal, eyes narrowed in determination. All she had to do was make it to the group and back with reinforcements before that thing made its way past the shield.

"I'll be back fur you! Don't you dare die while I'm gone!"

"I'm not planning on dying!" Mar shouted after her retreating form. Seriously, he would give it a good fight, and if he couldn't handle it, he'd run. A sad and pathetic plan, but what else did he have?

Oh well. He at least respected her for making the effort to work with him instead of staying and arguing a while longer. Really, about all he had to question at this point was why was she on all fours?!

Look, if you're used to it, running on all fours could be a very viable way to increase one's speed.

Or maybe Nepeta's just weird like that. Either way, with her natural speed combined with her Rogue abilities, she found herself rushing back to the main group in no time. The other Dragonsworn seemed otherwise occupied, and she didn't dare disturb the dragon mage while he was trying to get them out of there. For a moment, she started to worry.

Then her eyes fell on a pair of dragons flying overhead in a patrol patten. She immediately rose up to her full, if still rather short height, and began desperately waving her hands to get their attention. It didn't take all that long, thankfully, and communicating through mime that she wanted them to follow her took even less time. Neither dragon seemed all that eager to listen to her, but they flew after her nonetheless, probably having been given orders to check anything out, no matter what it was.

As she lead the way back to the shield's edge, she just hoped that the demon hadn't found the group and started its attack yet...

In a situation like this, with an overtaxed shield the only thing standing between the underpowered paladin and the massive pit lord, with a dragon's life on the line, a brave and noble paladin had only one option to take.

So when Nepeta returned, she found him on the other side of the shield from the Legion monster, vigorously dancing at it.

Sometimes, the only reaction possible to a situation is to stand there, stare confusedly, and think to yourself: "what".

That's exactly what Nepeta is doing as she gets close enough to see what Mar is accomplishing. It does seem to be successfully distracting the pit lord from everything else, but she's not entirely certain that's a good thing...

At least until the dragons, furious as soon as they see the demon, launch two enormous fireballs at it from below that it completely fails to do anything about. They don't kill it, but the monster is clearly in pain as it turns its attention to the sky, halberd in hand as it angrily starts swinging at the sky.

"Are you... well of course you're alright. Good job distracting it." She bounds up next to him and glances up at the dragons. "I don't think we're needed here anymore, do you?"

"It was nothing." He had completely failed to detect any confusion, irony, sarcasm, or... well, anything that his actions deserved, in her statement. He finished up one broad swing of his arm, then pulled himself up straight again to survey the scene.

"Yes. We'd be well-advised to get back to the portal and see if they've gotten it up and us out yet. Thanks for the team-up!" He flashed her a grin and a thumbs-up. "For not being entirely sure what you were doing, you weren't bad at all."

"Thanks! Hopefurry I'll get better once I actually figure out these powers." Which, really, only seemed like a reasonable assumption. "You seemed to have a purrty good idea of what I could do though. Is this sort of thing common where you come furrom?"

"Where I come from is here. More or less." He shrugged, but the dragons and the Burning Legion left no doubt in his mind that this was Azeroth. "And I've allied with many who favored stealth and a swift blade to the kidney as a means of attack."

"More or less?" Now, to most people that would be a bit confusing, but when you've been through SGRUB, you get more of a feel for this sort of thing, so it isn't hard for her to guess. "Is this another time fur you?"

"Probably!" People shouldn't sound so cheerful about getting bounced around time and space. "Azeroth's a temporal wreck, frankly, so the fact that I don't recognize this place, plus the Legion attack, all point to it being some time I don't know."

"Now I really wish Aradia was here." A hero of time would be precisely what they needed for this sort of problem. "Are there a whole bunch of doomed timelines involved?"

"Well I hope not." Maridian sounded faintly hurt. "We've worked so hard to preserve the thing."

"Oh no, I didn't mean this timeline... I meant, well, all the others. I mean, we're in the Alpha timeline... aren't we?"

She really, really hoped the answer to that question was yes.

"I don't think there's more than one at the present we live in," Mar mused. "I think as we continue forward in time at our normal pace, we collapse all possibilities into one certainty. There are countless timelines in the future that COULD be -- I went to one very depressing one once. But we've kept the past repaired thus far."

"Huh. That's not how it worked back where I come furrom. Or... maybe that was just the game? There were a whole bunch of parallel timelines, but only one successful one, and all the others would eventually be destroyed. We called them doomed timelines."

And she's a bit out of her depth trying to explain any further than that, but time shenanigans are pretty much always difficult to talk about.

your hands protect the flames

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