Grunt changes. That has been something I have been okay with for decades. Grunt loses intrest. That is something else I have been okay with because the one thing he has never lost interest in is me. We bounce from universe to universe, collecting all the interesting shit, studying all the interesting shit, fucking all the interesting people, and killing all the interesting enemies.
Then we move on.
But not this time. As I watched my husband help a tribe of frog people prepare to defend themselves against an enemy I know he doesn't give a shit about, I couldn't help but think about the machines he is building, the plans he is making, the permanence of it all.
The Eternal Alchemy sounds like some Gaia and Aella shit, maybe less personality, but every ounce the bullshit and destructive capacity. Normally, Grax wouldn't touch that shit, but not this time.
Listening to him go on and on about how the savages must be stopped before they fuck up all the Tuscan architecture really shows where his heart is on this verse.
For whatever reason, Grax loves it here. And I like it too.
Tyria was always on the right side of zany to keep me chuckling, everyone here was hot as hell, and we were never more than a few days walk from some wildly new and beautiful terrain.
The Verdant Brink, the locale our army was currently running around securing was a series of finger like mountains wrapped in massive vines, creating some of the most complicated and interesting terrain I had ever traversed, full of enemies and wildlife waiting for the chance to tear your head off.
Grunt was right to call this place Jungle Tuchanka so long as Mordremoth is around to wage his war on everything he doesn't control.
Speaking off, when his army rushed into the frogman village, we were treated to the sight of Medusa opening up a can of whoop ass in her signature style that left the frogmen wondering if she was one of theirs. The way she leapt around and clung to surfaces to create attack angles, and did so at Mach three, bursting the sound barrier with every move and turning the plant men to mulch. It was a damn work of art.
Kat and Linda had transitioned to this new world flawlessly, and despite not being anywhere near Medusa's power had committed fully to a clever application of the Archetype system here in this world. Kat had become nearly invulnerable behind the magnetic barriers she could generate as a Scrapper Engineer and Kat was completely in her element augmenting her firing prowess as a Deadeye Thief.
Wanda now rolled deep in undead minions, capable of summoning armies of fleshcrafted soldiers that healed her for every bit of damage they inflicted on her enemies. On top of this, her Reaper Shroud had grown immensely in power after the death of Zhaitan. She had broken the limits of her Archetype using Zhaitan's dragon energy and was now using all the abilities in her three specializations, meaning she absolutely wrecked anything her burning energy scythe touched.
Watching Grax turn into a giant radiant angel of doom was fucking neat. The guy could now drop nuke strikes with his hammer and delete anything that came into contact with his kilometer long beams of sword light. People were right to worship him. Gods were so often disappointing, but Grax shows up to show off.
Plus he actually cared.
We spent all day helping people across the Brink, and all night fighting the Champions of Mordremoth up in the jungle canopy. With each heavy hitter we brought down, people cheered. We killed them with the same contemptible ease they could kill normal people, and with all of them dead we secured the path into the Auric Basin.
We'd been a little too busy being gods and parents to have explored this far into the jungle, but the golden energy angels defending a golden city Tarir need to pay Grax royalties for ripping off his divine avatar look. They should also pay tribute for us saving their asses from some sentient vines.
The Tangled depths were a cluster fuck that culminated in us slaying four of the giant land shrimp call chak. They eat magic and use it to generate force fields that make them a mother fucking nightmare for normal people to kill. They were especially attracted to the magic cannons we set up to siege the final stretch of the jungle, Dragon's Stand.
Dragon's Stand is where things finally got interesting for me. We fought our way thorough the last of Mordremoth's Champions and made our way to the Dragon's main body, a bit of a fake out considering that Mordremoth was actually a thought based being that controlled plants in the physical world, but at least we got to duke it out with a massive wyrm style dragon.
It was my first time manifesting my divine avatar, a process Grax had walked me through, but unlike his form which he created using the radiant fire and light of his Archetype and Ormagoden and his own fire base divinity, I felt a bigger draw from the metal of the Fire Beast's body and the primordial shadows we picked up from Zhaitan. My avatar was a giant beast made of fire, shadow, and molten metal. I flew at the dragon on a pair of smoking bat-like wings and struck its body with a fiery greatsword and axe.
Medusa looked similar, except made of fire and stone, as she too battled against the dragon with Grax flying circles around the beast while dragging his sword up and down its body.
The fight lasted for hours, but three gods of fire versus one plant dragon could only go one way. We destroyed the body Mordremoth had built for himself and allowed the normies to chase the dragon into the astral plane while we got ready to absorb the released energy that would erupt upon the Dragon's death.
Pulling the strength of the dragon into our being added Plant and Mind to our previous domains, Fire, Blood, Metal, Noise, Death, and Shadows. Fire was still our primary domain and would pull ahead even more once Primordus and Jormag bite the dust.
We didn't take all the energy for ourselves, just enough to establish a connection to those domains, but the raw power increase was absolutely thrilling. I knew the next hit was coming as soon as Balthazaar reestablished his power. Poor guy had no idea what was coming for him.