5/22 evening
The assault team was small, but substantial. Onyxia, Ysondre, Emeriss, Lividia, and Noboru. Noboru was much weaker than the others, but he was also a Paladin. He was reasonably strong offensively, extremely tough, well equipped to support his allies, and could become a meme and bubble hearth if he was pressed. Lividia was going because… basically, why not? Nothing could happen that would meaningfully harm her, and she could carry a spare necklace. I'd have sent the demons along too, but Onyxia got them all killed this morning, and they hadn't reformed enough to resummon yet.
The team started their assault by doing a few strafing runs on the assembled lashers. It seemed like a safe bet, either baiting the enemy out of their protected ring of Ancient Protectors, or devastating their most vulnerable mooks unimpeded. Lethon and his honor guard took the bait; the three green dragons flew out to meet them even as the dragonspawn began to mobilize. I was watching the whole exchange, mostly through Ysondre's eyes. As the healer of the group, she was keeping a much broader perspective as the fight commenced.
The team knew who the target was, so once he seemed vulnerable, Onyxia, Emeriss, Lividia, and Noboru all collapsed onto Lethon. It was actually quite brutal; Onyxia alone could have probably overpowered him with raw strength, and Emeriss was his equal in a straight brawl, but having both of them, and a pair of smaller dragons, and a full strength Shadow Word: Pain from me meant that he was forced to the ground almost immediately. Lividia had an amulet ready to try to wrap around his neck, and successfully collared him while the other three held his writhing form down.
Unfortunately, the team paid for that. While I pulled out to change his setting and paralyze him, the enemy rallied and swarmed my recently grounded dragons. The dragonspawn charged in with huge blades and began hacking away at my crew while the lashers flooded in like the tide. I'd have considered it a win anyway, except that the dragons who had been supposed to guard Taerar's flank apparently decided that they had work to do.
One of them created a storm of dozens of illusory copies of himself, which were more than real enough to stop Ysondre from focusing on healing. The other summarily dispatched Lividia as she locked the necklace around the big dragon's neck. The moment Taerar seized up from his new trigger, the drake severed his spine. The nightmare had decided I didn't get any more of its pets.
My team was taking a beating, and technically our primary objective, eliminating Taerar, had been fulfilled on what was intended to be a scouting mission, so I gave the order to get the hell out of there. Emeriss had a wing almost fully severed, so I summoned her instead. She'd be fine for the next big fight, hopefully. Well, she's half ancient now. Maybe she can eat a tree to heal?
Once everyone was out of the line of fire, I returned to myself, opened my eyes, and jumped. There was a silent creature in front of me, sitting on its haunches, staring at me with a single huge red split pupil eye. It's skin was slate grey, and it was covered in spines. It had no mouth, just a proboscis sticking out from just under the eye. It's long, stinger tipped tail lazily flicked behind it, the only sign of motion to confirm it wasn't just a very creepy statue.
It took me a moment to realize that this was the Nightmare Skitterer. Taerar was dead, so I got the third reward. I hadn't really expected things to go this well, honestly. I hadn't gotten Taerar, and his body was inaccessible for reanimation unless I followed up with an all out assault I probably wasn't ready for.
No. No, fuck that. I took on the biggest threat already; Emeriss may be grounded for the moment, but I should be able to heal up the rest of the squad within an hour. I sent out a general broadcast to check notes to all but a few of my troops.
'Everyone currently in the field with combat effectiveness above that of the average soldier. Coordinate with any members of the retinue that are within a mile or two to determine who will be staying behind to serve as a recall point. Transport yourselves to the current location of Calia Dawnbreeze. Assemble for combat against a large force. Those capable of effective combat while flying, gather the strongest ranged combatant you can carry and report to Lady Onyxia.'
It felt reckless, but I didn't like losing and I didn't want a partial win. Most importantly, I really didn't want my necklace getting back to a millennia old Satyr archmage unless it was going straight around his neck.
••••••••••
We assembled quickly and took to the skies, our primary two mission objectives being the retrieval of the necklace and Taerar. The defenders seemed to have expected this, and were guarding the corpse, slowly dragging it back towards the portal.
My full complement of fifteen dragons of varying sizes, mounted by my best casters and rangers (except Abby, Eliza, and the druid trio), opened the assault with a strafing run. A rain of spells, arrows, and breath weapons rained merry hell upon their ranks, leaving the survivors softened up for the first ground assault. Nearly a hundred harvest golems had survived the first attack, and I fully expected them to die en masse at this point, which they did, but they kept the enemy from properly responding to the second and far more elite wave making their way towards Taerar.
It was a small but deadly team. Emeriss was in good enough shape to fight on land, and she led the charge. Her flanks were guarded by Varian, Doris, a handful of undead dredges, Hamhock, Tessa, Stitches, Sadie, and the slightly surprising addition of Nozara. The ancient Man'ari mage obliterated waves of lashers from atop Emeriss's back with gouts of fire, letting her team focus a bit more on the Dragonspawn. All the while, Vanessa was sneaking in to retrieve the necklace quietly.
The plan, sloppily thrown together at the last minute as it was, didn't go perfectly. We got the necklace back, but the defending regiment of dragonspawn had healers of their own, and the two remaining dragons played keep away, trying to bait my team into the range of the protectors. Even the ground team got a surprise in the form of dozens of satyrs melting out of the shadows and surrounding the dragon.
The harvest golems were trading one for one, but were outnumbered. Tessa needed to use a full heal, and Hamhock teleported away when he got badly pressed. Onyxia was smashing illusory dragons out of the sky left and right, but she was also coated with a fizzing acidic foam that was melting through her thick scales. If I'd kept going, I probably would have won eventually, but it would have been a grinding, painful victory with several of my troops dead or at least depleted of their full restore. I wasn't willing to risk losing that many resources.
"Pull out. We got our first objective. Let's get out of here."
The fighting retreat went reasonably well, with nobody going down but several bad injuries. After all, if they tried to chase us out of their defenses, we could turn on them pretty easily. I was willing to take this as a win. I'd prefer to get another dragon, but as long as I didn't need to worry about Xavius subverting or copying my necklaces somehow, I could be content.
I will probably need to come back here again; I don't have much hope that the gate is going to completely close with those two middleweight dragons manning it, and it was effectively a beachhead for the nightmare to do… something nefarious. I don't know details, but everything I do know is bad. At least I might be able to pawn the problem off onto the Horde or the Sentinels. No one is exactly thrilled to have a nightmare incursion in their backyard.
••••••••••
I examined the Nightmare Skitterer more closely while Imriss made his way to Feathermoon Stronghold. It watched me closely and obeyed orders, but didn't seem to have any initiative or thought. It also couldn't do anything outside of its purpose: move, hide, watch, assess, capture.
I felt a bit smug being able to report that I'd dealt with all three other dragons before Shandris was ready to attack. After all, she had quite literally more than ten thousand times as much experience as I did, and I'd handled the problem before she'd even properly assessed it.
"So that's the situation. We were better positioned in the Eastern kingdoms to strike quickly, but they have reached the point where our forces can't easily dislodge one of them. They have established enough of a beachhead that we can't overrun them easily. Lady Ysondre and her forces will of course support you in any way we can, but you'll be doing the lion's share of the work."
Shandris pursed her lips. "Yes of course. I've lost people in skirmishes with them; we have kept their numbers down, but there are limits to what we can do without a stronger front line. The reinforcements from the Druids of the Claw have just arrived, so once Lady Tyrande is here the day after tomorrow tomorrow we should be able to launch our assault."
I nodded sagely. "Yes, that's probably for the best. Our forces need the time to heal as well." Very few of my people had gotten out unscathed, and Ysondre was working overtime to fix the more complicated injuries. Sadie, of course, was scrambling to explain to her team why she had suddenly vanished and been replaced with three undead but highly efficient Druids. In retrospect, I really do seem to keep putting people in awkward positions.
All this, and I still needed to deal with the Dark Iron clan and the whole situation with Windsor before going to bed.