TEEN: Starcraft vs. Warcraft: First Contact

[Ihsan997]

This is a crossover story within fandoms owned by Blizzard Entertainment, though the focus is primarily on OCs created by yours truly. I started writing this on a whim and am having oodles of fun with it.

Rating: teen

Genre: science fiction

Synopsis: In the far reaches of the Koprulu Sector, a confluence of worlds through the Nexus occurs for the first time. Years before major events, light years away from major locations, a relatively small contingent each from the Protoss and the Eredar engage on a close encounter of the third kind. What could be a peaceful exchange of ideas is held back by the actors involved, and an accord can never be reached; for the Protoss are Tal’darim, and the Eredar serve the Burning Legion.

This story is set before both Starcraft 1 and Warcraft 1.

Content Warnings

• Anti-villain: the main character occasionally does the right thing for the wrong reasons, leaving the secondary protagonist as a better role model.
• Character death: there will be the death of both antagonist as well as minor protagonist characters, though descriptions in this case will be generic to avoid graphic violence.
• Oppression: the oppression of a stronger political force over a weaker one will be a major theme of this story.
• Violence: there will be instances of violence given the setting, though I‘ll do my best to avoid vivid or graphic description.

Table of Contents (I’m planning for this to be a short fic, so this might not be necessary)

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 1

Across the emptiness of space, a singular metallic vessel floated, far from the Koprulu Sector’s settled worlds where few such ships ever flew. Illuminated only by the Milky Way’s natural backdrop of stars, the sharp-angled capital ship passed within the heliosphere of a lonely star system, carrying out the unenviable task of picket duty in a region bereft even of simple mining colonies.



Inside the spacious bridge rounded by curved architecture, multiple robed Protoss dressed for a long voyage through unoccupied space rather than for war milled about, nearly as silent as the void which they watched beyond the transparent energy dome around them. At the front of the carrier’s sparsely decorated bridge, on an obsidian platform beneath curved girders shedding crimson light, one dark figure stood over a circular table augustly while studying a holographic projection. Blood-colored lights forming a celestial array shined on what portions of his medium gray skin were exposed in between folds of jet fabric. A somber boredom marked the features of the carrier’s commander, evidenced in the glazed over look in his eyes as he swiped through various representations of the star map for the region immediately surrounding his ship. Even when swipe after swipe of the star map app revealed no disturbances, however, he dutifully continued scanning through the star system based on the images transmitted back by his robotic probes. For more than an hour he stood, performing the unenviable task of his picket duty until one of his crew members approached.



Similarly dressed in jet robes not usually seen save far outside of war time, the Protoss woman walked up the ramp leading to the platform. “Commander Hyrioth,” she said, her telepathic voice shimmering with subdued excitement. “I bring news from the communications nodule.”



Arms folded behind his back, the commander didn’t turn around, though he did turn his head slightly. “Tell me, Ghildra,” was all he said.



She moved closer to the celestial array. “We’ve received a signal from an alien species in the nearest star system.”



The grey-skinned being’s crimson eyes shot open, their glow matching the holographic projection. “Intriguing,” he replied cautiously, and his subordinate spoke with more fervor.



“The signal isn’t intelligible. It took the form of a single ping on our communications array. We transmitted a demand to identify themselves, but they simply continued to ping us more.”



The commander didn’t need long to make a decision. “This is either a trap by a hostile force, or an attempt to make contact by an inferior entity,” Hyrioth said, his emotional signature marked by a moment of caution before he spoke with more enthusiasm. “Both possibilities could lead to violence…”



Ghildra watched intently while he accessed the ship’s wider internal communications uplink, twirling his fingers among three-dimensional projections of various control panels. After a few seconds, he initiated a projection of his own mouthless, noseless face floating on various panels and daises throughout the vessel. Other Protoss among the hundred or so strong skeleton crew, similarly garbed in dark robes rather than the metallic trappings of war, turned to see the various projections of their mission commander in the forge, the core, the bunks, and the hangar of their starship.



“All crew prepare for an alien encounter,” Hyrioth said, his communication shimmering across every inhabited hall. “We move to confront an artificial signal in the next star system.”



His brief order was meant with heartfelt, if subdued, rounds of agreement and affirmation. Ending the transmission, the grey-skinned commander turned toward the remainder of his bridge staff behind him. “Ghildra, prepare the engines for faster-than-light travel to the next star system.”



“Yes sir!” she replied with gusto while walking toward a separate holographic array, this one down the ramp and to one side of the central platform.



Hyrioth pointed toward another one of his subordinates, this one closer to the door leading out of the bridge. “Orux, activate the assault cluster and remain on alert for possible maneuvers.”



“Aye aye!” the younger Protoss replied before taking his leave.



“Kyr, take the helm for manual steering of the ship in the event of interstellar obstructions.”



“It will be done,” replied another crew member, this one on the other side of the central platform.



“The engines are prepped, sir!” Ghildra said from her side of the central platform.



“Then waste no time; the crew has been sufficiently warned.” Hyrioth used his celestial array to set the course, accessing the coordinates of the ping via the data of Ghildra’s previous encounter with the signals logged in their database. “Warp now.”



The colorless dark of space glowed red as the carrier entered warp space. Only minimal g-force could be felt as they sped over to the next star system, one of many unimportant, unnamed worlds barren of life on the edge of the sector. In what felt like mere moments, the carrier traveled nearly five light years and exited warp space, leaving what looked like a red tunnel into the black of outer space once again. Moments after they exited, those staff members in the bridge murmured and stood up to gaze at the curious find in front of them.



In a system lacking worlds with breathable atmospheres, a barren moon in front of their domed viewport glowed with activity. Neon green lights lit up a portion of the surface, pulsating with what seemed to be an artificial surface not unlike the shields which protected the carrier’s crew from the vacuum of space. Most strangely, there was a foreign starship in between them and the moon, floating oblong and drifting without any apparent activity in the dark grey vessel’s thrusters - or at least what looked like thrusters.



The crew all looked to Hyrioth, alarmed as he was though not quite as incensed. He made a fist with both fingers and thumbs on one hand, subconsciously squeezing when he realized that the visual design of the ship was most certainly not one of their own.



“Our picket duty for the part orbital cycle hasn’t been for naught,” he murmured.



“Commander?” Ghildra asked hesitantly. “Your orders?”



Hyrioth grunted indignantly, causing a metallic audial sound rather than an intelligible mental signal. “This vessel is trespassing in our space. Tell Orux to activate the tractor beams without negotiation; I must have this interdictor brought to question in our hangar.”



“Yes sir!”



“Kyr, provide all relevant statistics for me now, and know that I’ll judge your value as a living being if you leave out anything relevant.”



The younger Protoss man looked from Hyrioth to his manual piloting array and back again. “Yes! Yes sir! We’re currently in the gravitational field of this natural satellite, itself in the gravitational field of its planet; that’s 300 and 300,000 kilometers from our current location respectively. The ship in question is now caught in our tractor beam and approaching from a distance of six kilometers, and the orbital period is-“



“Enough. You have my permission to engage in evasive maneuvers in the event of a counterattack from these trespassers.”



“Your will be done!” Kyr replied, relieved to have passed the test.



“Ghildra, continue to provide power and monitor all necessary systems, and calibrate our teleportation dais to transmit biodata directly into our hangar.”



“Yes sir!” she replied while vigorously manipulating the various holographic controls projected above her array.



Hyrioth walked down his platform and onto the dais as the foreign ship drew nearer and nearer in his carrier’s tractor beam. As his form began to dematerialize, his boredom subsided, and his long wait during his assigned picket duty finally felt like it was paying off. “These interlopers will answer for their violation of Tal’darim territory!” he said right before his image disappeared.

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 2

In the long hangar of the Tal’darim carrier, Hyrioth waited with a contingent of his crew while they watched the modestly sized foreign ship pulled in from the cold outer space through a portion of the hangar shield which became semi-permeable to allow it entry. The tractor bream pulled the dull, bulky strike vessel half a kilometer down the hangar bay until it came to rest on the edge of the observation platform, granting whatever occupants waited within the choice of either facing the crew or diving off the platform and to the bottom of the hangar below, a fatal fall if they didn’t understand how to mentally manipulate the disc-shaped anti-gravity platforms floating around below. Given the crude appearance of the foreign ship’s thrusters and opening hatch, its occupants most likely wouldn’t understand how.



Larger than a Conclave shuttle, the foreign ship floated just above the platform, suspended by the hangar’s stasis field along the floor. When he looked beyond the ship and out the front of the hangar, Hyrioth could still see the neon green glow of the barren moon’s surface below, causing him to become irate as he ordered two probes to forcibly open the heavy, unwieldy ship hatch. Though his crew hadn’t yet donned the trappings of war, two of his adepts had their glaive cannons aimed at the open ramp leading up inside.



“By my side,” he told the two adepts. The remainder of his warriors strode just behind him, allowing their mission overlord to walk in front with a visibly irritated gait. Rather than speaking clearly via Khalani, Hyrioth sent out a mental ping similar to that his crew had received from the ship itself. Most sentient life forms would likely feel the ping, even if they didn’t comprehend its origin, and as he walked up the ramp and into a narrow, low hall, he could hear the yelps and cries of creatures which communicated via sound.



The ship’s entry hallway opened up to a high, bulbous central chamber decorated with primitive displays which pre-spaceflight peoples found to be either gruesome or edgy. Pillars topped with internal organs and columns of flame rounded the central red carpet, beckoning the Protoss crew into the center along with the weeping of pitiful caprine creatures behind bars lining the far edges of the chamber. The eyes of hidden beings watched the group as they walked into the corpse-strewn central chamber, and one of the warriors behind Hyrioth called the hangar for a Havoc support robot on instinct. Yelling mixed with the weeping as the caged caprines began to point and reach out to the Protoss, their pathetic begging disgusting Hyrioth, though not as much as the grandstanding of a legless caprine which looked like some sort of lower form of archon.



Hyrioth stopped in the center of the chamber, waiting for the apparent prison guard of the blue caprine beings to turn and notice his presence. The jailer saw him and turned halfway, its goatlike nose and goatee disgusting the Protoss almost as much as the floating creature’s excessive body hair. Like the prisoners, the guard began jabbering in their mouth-based, odorous form of primary communication, causing Hyrioth to wince in disgust as they flapped their buccal cavities at him.



Using his telepathy in a harsh manner which would be apparent to all but painful to the uninitiated, Hyrioth made his first announcement. “Cease your orifice-clapping and think out your message this instant,” he telepathically transmitted, causing the various aliens in the room to all bristle in neurological pain upon the first few Khalani words. “You stand in the presence of the Tal’darim; I won’t suffer your primitive, backward braying in lieu of actual communication.”



The jailer paused for a moment, gazing upon the Protoss with a small measure of offensive condescension yet also hesitation; the numerous green blood stains on the floor spoke of a prior conflict, and the presence of only a few other insivible entities suggested that there had very recently been a sort of mutiny aboard. While the jailer hesitated, one of the blue caprine creatures seized the opportunity to grovel to a more potentially amenable savior. Obviously female, she walked in front of the other prisoners toward the bars and looked directly at Hyrioth. Though she had a full mouth and graying black hair, her form was not entirely foreign to the Protoss, and she’d almost look beautiful were in not for the excess number of orifices on her head. Striding on legs which looked very similar to his own people’s, she thought her message to him, clearly and with both images and words. Her lips moved along with her thoughts, though he forgave her for that given her obedient response.



“Oh great Tal’darim, we, the Draenei, appeal to your power and superiority! These transgressors seek to make your planet a prison for us!”



In response, the jailer pointed at her angrily, jammering orally and thinking the message “shut up” without entirely intending to do so. Although the woman calling her people Draenei erred in referring to a barren moon as Hyrioth’s planet, her appropriate deference and respect for his method of speaking endeared her to him. The jailer’s recalcitrance, however, did just the opposite.



“If you won’t obey,” Hyrioth said while stepping ahead of his warriors, “then you will be compelled.”



Turning to regard him with a level of arrogance which enraged the Protoss, the jailer finally communicated via thought. “Wait your turn for enslavement!”



The jailer then raised a glowing hand, channeling what looked like a psionic orb yet which lacked the usual signature which all Protoss recognized. Before the strange ability could reach its end, Hyrioth reached out as well, latching on to the jailer’s outstretched arm and rotating his wrist. The jailer’s arm broke with a loud snap, causing the legless alien to cry out in pain and float lower to the ground. Still unarmed and dressed only in robes, Hyrioth strode forward and grabbed the jailer by the goatee, yanking and slamming the creature to the ground to the point where he knocked the wind out of it.



“Weakness!” he said in an annoyed mental tone while lifting the jailer up again and shoving the creature’s face into one of the pillars.



The monument had apparently been made of stone, as it shattered into large chunks in a similar fashion to the jailer’s cranium. Tossing the twitching alien away as it died a painful death, Hyrioth turned back towards the cages and telekinetically broke the lock on the door. Hope lit up in the eyes of the caprine creatures called Draenei, and all seven of their unwashed masses ambled out. Below the neck, their phenotype appeared normal to the Protoss, though their reliance on holes in their heads in order to see, breathe, smell, eat, and speak seemed quite unfamiliar. Their pretentious hope and open arms proved to be too premature too.



Hyrioth pointed one finger toward the floor in between himself and the freed prisoners. “You stand in the presence of a higher authority; you have my permission to genuflect.”



Confusion marked the expression of all the Draenei, causing Hyrioth to furrow his brow in displeasure. A few of them knelt down, but the female frowned. “You…have our thanks for rescuing us,” she said shyly, clearly gauging the Protoss for a reaction. “The Legion has imprisoned us so cruelly-“



He cut her off with a wave of his hand. “What makes you think I’ll be any more benevolent of a master than them?” he asked rhetorically. He pointed to the floor again, and this time, all seven Draenei knelt in front of him fearfully. “Encounters between a superior and inferior civilization play out the same in all instances, and you find yourself in the presence of the most advanced civilization in the history of the universe.”



Still kneeling, the female who appeared to be the ragtag group’s leader looked up at him and the half-circle of other Protoss formed around them, lording over the unfortunate crowd of Draenei like conquerors. “May your strength ever increase, mighty Tal’darim,” she said softly, stroking his ego in all the right ways. “We only seek the benevolence of such a superior people, and we disavow the trespass of the Legion upon your hallowed territory. Only you can save the rest of us!”



“The rest of you?” Hyrioth asked incredulously. “Allowing you out of those cages without striking you down is already an act of charity which you were not owed. You dare to ask for more?”



The other Draenei were visibly shaking having watched him dispatch their tormentor so easily, but their leader found a way to politely refuse to yield without incurring his wrath. “We only offer a mutually beneficial exchange, oh great one. I would like to offer you a gift which helps us both.”



“You have nothing that I want.”



“But a moment more of your time, for every minute in your hallowed presence is a blessing to us!” He paused, recognizing the performative nature of her groveling yet enjoying it nonetheless. When he didn’t interrupt her, she continued. “Please grant us this audience, for you’ve not yet even been informed of what transpired on this ship or how we arrived here.”



“My failure to ask should be sign enough of my active disinterest, but…I’ll humor you. Tell me why this ship is here in myassigned patrol area, and what those glowing lights are doing on the surface of my moon. Perhaps I can derive some entertainment from this story before I destroy whatever lies on the surface below and then put your group to work as birthday clowns for our younglings.”



“I, Anchorite Moraa, am honored to fulfill your request!” She stood up halfway and nodded to him, seeking his permission before standing up straight. “We are but a handful of our people, all of us refugees…the Legion, of whom this jailer was a member, has chased our people from world to world for ages. Most of us escape time and time again, but myself and fifty of my fellows were captured.”



“The idle might be naturally tempted to calculate fifty minus seven considering what I see,” Hyrioth said, harshly interrupting her. “However, I have no interest in your internal affairs. Tell me why these ships are in my space. Now.”



“Your wish is my command, exalted one! The Legion transcends all realities; they travel from plane to plane with the express goal of destroying all they find so that the void cannot corrupt it.”



The Protoss crew were visibly taken aback, but their commander leaned down and raised an eyebrow curiously at the Draenei priestess’ words. “Void corruption, you say?”



“They’re misguided, but that’s their motivation. They try to destroy your world too!”



Pulling his head back, Hyrioth allowed his abdominal muscles to twitch as he reacted to the news with derision. “This is bad comedy. I will flay all of these creatures alive and bomb whatever settlement they’ve established on the moon.”



Using her mouth and fleshy chin to great effect, Moraa showed her dismay in an animated fashion. “Please, the rest of us are within the command ship of this Legion contingent. You can destroy the forward base they’ve laid on your moon, but please don’t destroy their command ship just yet. The rest of us will die!”



“You seem to think that I’m concerned for the wellbeing of your people due to the favoritism I showed to you over this imitation archon on the floor. I’ll make a note not to mislead you into believing me to be merciful in the future.”



Without skipping a beat, Moraa continued to negotiate, to much greater effect than Hyrioth had expected. “If you destroy their ship, then you won’t be able to personally slay the mastermind who chose to enter your world. Your domination will be incomplete.”



In spite of Moraa coming from another star system…somewhere, and in spite of her having met Hyrioth mere moments ago, she seemed to understand his mentality. He didn’t know how she’d come to have experience with similar conquerors, nor did he care, but she had won his momentary tolerance with her verbal skills. “Continue,” Hyrioth said with a roll of his finger.



Not disappointing him, she continued her flattery-laced plea. “The Legion captured one hundred of us when my people last escaped. Half were sacrificed so our souls could fuel their ship engines while the other half of us were retained as slaves and playthings. Aboard their command ship are the rest of my people. If you engage their commander Bozel directly, then you may slay their inferior counterpart to you in single combat. In doing so, you can also set our people free, and we can commandeer their ship to leave your territory, as we attempted to do with this one before the jailer stopped us. If you shield us with your great strength, then we both benefit!”



“You make an intriguing appeal, alien, but you must also realize that I can now board their ship, claim victory from their leader without you, and ignore your fellows.”



“But you can’t enter their ship without destroying it in the process. My people share a common ancestry with Bozel’s people as the Eredar; we know their technology and can help you gain access.”



“And I could always torture your six compatriots here, right in front of you, until you tell me how to board, without granting you any further boons,” Hyrioth said in a calm, collected tone. “You have provided what seems like a sound plan yet no reason for me to enact it.”



Maintaining excellent posture in front of his taciturn visage and dark promises, she moved beyond his tolerance and won a measure of his affection. “You hold within your hands the power to do whatever with us you wish; I knew that the moment I saw you. You must realize why I reached out to you so immediately, oh man of will. But I posit this to you: your prove nothing by imposing that will on weaklings such as us. Your strength will only be tested, and only grow, against the most capable among a group. That is most certainly the ones who captured us, not prisoners in tattered rags,” she said, sweeping her hands in front of her sullied, battered companions.



Humming to himself, Hyrioth considered both her oratory skills as well as the reality of her proposition. He stepped forward, causing the other Draenei to shudder and even causing a measure of nervousness to well up inside Moraa herself. He raised a hand and twirled his fingers around, absentmindedly making gestures while weighing his options and forcing the caprine prisoners to wait, yet she didn’t lose hope. He found that hope to be both pitiful and admirable in a way he couldn’t quite explain.



“What you lack in combat prowess you make up for in tenacity of spirit,” Hyrioth said while she stood, tense when he was that close to her yet unflinching and unrelenting in her insistent, pleading gaze. “If only your people didn’t appear so…peaceful.”



Before he could say any more, the support robot one of his crew members had requested floated aboard. The Havoc robot, curved metal surrounding a spherical psionic energy core, beeped and flashed the moment it reached the central chamber. “Hostile target detected,” it announced in its staccato voice before pulsating in a wave of red light which bathed the entire chamber in a wave bursting in every direction.



On the opposite side of the chamber, a previously hidden entity flickered into view, sparking with red static as a form of invisibility was nullified by the Havoc. Another caprine creature, this one winged and much smaller than all the others, shrieked in fright as her leather-clad visage was revealed. Hyrioth turned, watching the ugly little alien much in the way one would observe a train wreck. His crew members remained alert but unaggressive in the absence of a cue from their leader, though the captive Draenei, as they called themselves, reacted with similar fright.



“The Succubus, she was spying on our conversation!” Moraa said urgently. “Look, she’s going toward the ship’s scrying bowl!”



Despite his favor toward Moraa, Hyrioth still lacked sufficient information to view the nasty little creature dashing toward the ship’s cockpit as a threat. “A bowl? Do the orifices of the pink-skinned ones always yearn for mastication at such socially inappropriate times?”



The other Draenei raised their heads and looked on in alarm. “Your greatness, she’ll contact the rest of the Legion forces and tell them of your arrival!”



“Good,” Hyrioth said, stunning Moraa into perplexed silence. “By my side,” he then told one of his adepts and another warrior, leading the trio toward the cockpit without a word.



Inside, there was what appeared to be a circular basin containing green slop in front of an archaic series of levers and buttons near the ship’s viewport. The Succubus stood over the mist-laden stew of green slop as the image of yet another goatlike being materialized. The Succubus spoke with extreme speed, flapping her food hole with such a rhythm that the orifice seemed to be the only part of her anatomy with any muscular control to speak of. Hyrioth and his two aides visibly cringed at the bizarre physiology, causing the Succubus to look back at them in terror and then speak more frantically to the red caprine whose projection now hovered over the green slop.



When the Succubus began to jump up and down anxiously, Hyrioth cut off her oration by grabbing her by the hair, giving her body a single vigorous shake sufficient to pop all of her vertebrae out of place, and dropping her twitching, dying body much in the same way he’d done to the jailer. Taking her place over the noxious soup filled with bones, he faced down the crimson caprine to whom the Succubus had been speaking. Much like her, the goatman began jabbering away, his thoughts a mess of individual words and unconnected thoughts. Hyrioth beamed his own message harshly, ensuring that his telepathy would leave a migraine when he was done.



“I am One-Hundred and Forty-Second Ascendant Hyrioth, commander of the Glazier, representative of Amon’s Chosen in this stellar region, and sole authority to whom you answer. You are now receiving a single warning to vacate Tal’darim space with all of your forces within the next standard hour, or face annihilation for your intransigence.”



The shirtless Eredar man flinched in pain at the telepathic message, struggling yet failing to conceal the reaction of his central nervous system. Regardless, he persevered more than Hyrioth had expected, and he overcame the pain much more quickly than most members of backward species did. Grimacing at the warning, the Eredar known as Bozel thought his response, though with a measure of reticence in the beginning.



“I am Bozel, commander of the Burning Legion domination force to your plane of existence. This is only the beginning of our conquest here to rid your dimension of the void monstrosity Amon. We will-“



Another mental spike from Hyrioth caused Bozel to wince; the Eredar quickly blocked out the pain, but his words were cut off, both by the telepathic poke as well as the sound of Hyrioth’s fist smashing the delicate circular discs forming the gross green bowl’s communications apparatus. Both of the Protoss warriors behind him flinched and took a step back.



“This is an out-raaaaaaaaaage!” he yelled indignantly at the insult to Amon, causing the Draenei to all shudder even back in the central chamber. Both of his warriors fled when he walked back into the central chamber, granting him wide berth as he approached the prisoners. All of them ran back into the cages save Moraa, who stood tense and afraid yet just brave enough to risk the gamble that his anger wasn’t directed at her. Her gamble paid off. “Exit this tin can and march to the bridge of my ship,” he said, prompting his warriors to grab and drag the Draenei out into the hangar for him.



Even though she was still shaken, Moraa realized that her suggestion had been accepted, and she obediently exited the ship alongside her companions. “We will give you all that you need!” she said, sealing the deal with a man in possession of a one-track mind.



Hyrioth exited last, stepping on an imp which had been hiding behind a column without even noticing the crunching sound beneath his foot. “This Burning Legion will fall!”

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 3

The bridge of the Glazier was abuzz with activity from the moment in which the teleportation dais opened up to the hangar. Hyrioth’s crew members jogged back and forth, much more active and rushed than was the norm for their people. Even without access to the Khala like the main body of the Protoss, the Tal’darim crew could sense their commander’s anger in his aggressive footsteps and tense shoulders as he approached the central platform in front of the viewport. People ran to the teleportation platforms to move from the bridge to the hangar, the forge to the bridge, and even other locations in less efficient routes as they worked to avoid their commander’s scrutiny.



Kyr, his younger assistant, approached him first. “What shall we do with our alien captives?” the obsequious supplicant asked.



Hyrioth didn’t even slow down in his march to the front of the bridge. “Send the main body of them to the interrogation chamber and extract any technical specifications about the opposing fleet, but leave their leader and whichever two companions she chooses with me.”



Moraa took his prompt to pull two other Draenei away with her. Despite the tension mounting around her, she retained a commendable stiff upper lip. A tremendous amount of pressure weighed down on her as she stood surrounded by an unkind foreign species, in an unfamiliar star system, as she watched five of her people led away by an armed adept. Rather than crack or beg, however, she remained respectably cool-headed and diplomatic in her diction.



“My people will cooperate with whatever your crew needs,” Moraa told Hyrioth while struggling to match his pace.



He shook his head without turning to face her. “Even if you forced my hand as such, my crew don’t have time to properly torture your people; I’ll suffice with simple interview questions to them,” he said, unintentionally reassuring her. He then waved for her to stand next to him on the middle platform of the bridge, right in front of the viewport. “There’s activity on the surface of that moon. Why are they on my moon?”



“They intend to invade your entire dimension, your greatness. This is what the Legion does: they send an initial scout force to new worlds, set up a forward base, and reach out for local denizens whom they can convert.”



“Tell me what they’ve set up so far,” he demanded, though not rudely per se.



“They warped in a single barrack to house their own staff, mainly for the purposes of observation. Their sorcerers have established a barrier to generate an artificial atmosphere so they can breathe, and they’re preparing to summon more ships through portals as we speak. My people and I were laboring in their soul engines when we saw the opportunity to hijack the ship in your hangar now, so we’ve only been gone for a short time; I don’t think there would be many more ships-“



In the middle of Moraa’s sentence, a series of green lights flashed in front of both of them, nearly overwhelming the crimson glow in the Glazier’s bridge. Shining like miniaturized stars, the neon green distortions were soon eclipsed by unclear objects bearing the same dull coal-like color of the ship which Moraa had hijacked. Several more lights flashed, interspersed by the call of Ghildra behind them.



“Multiple unidentified flying objects identified! They appear to be entering, though not from warp space. Our systems can’t trace the origins.”



When the lights stopped flashing, several more of the spaceships revealed themselves, all of them of roughly the same dimensions as the stolen ship in the carrier’s hangar save for two which were larger. Behind them all sailed one more starship lifting off from the surface of the moon, a sizable capital ship comparable to the Glazier itself. One of Moraa’s companions spoke up from behind the pair on the central platform and attempted to join them.



“The Legion has sent for reinforcements!” blurted out a Draenei man wearing a ripped, muddy cloak. “What will we do?”



In an instant, Hyrioth turned half way and let his arm fly out, striking the Draenei hard across the face with an errant backhand. The caprine man tumbled down the platform, rolling down to the main floor of the bridge and clutching his face. Moraa looked on with a measure of worry, though her composure proved to be more ironclad than that of many battlefield combatants, and she only looked up at the ship’s commander quizzically.



“Do not presume to question me, alien,” Hyrioth said without anger so much as disdain. “Rephrase your sentence if you wish to remain in my good graces.”



Although Hyrioth had no true ‘good graces,’ Moraa mediated the brief exchange deftly. “I believe my colleague has misunderstood how to phrase statements when using your method of communication. What he meant to say is that you’re now facing an expedition squadron which usually wouldn’t appear at a forward base so early.” She turned and glanced at her injured companion who was being helped to his feet by their third disheveled compatriot, though her mind was clear of any discernible message. “The Legion seems to have taken your warning as a challenge.”



Her words allayed any further disciplinary action on Hyrioth’s part. “How are you so familiar with this Burned Legion’s tactics?” he asked while the enemy ships engaged in an offensive formation right in front of them.



“My people have been fleeing from world to world to escape them for millennia. This pattern has been repeating for so long…” She paused, her heartache over many homes and lifestyles abandoned disappearing as her tail began to swish nervously in reaction to the increasing number of Burning Legion ships. “Your lordness, they will begin shooting us very soon.”



Unintelligible metallic sounds emitted from Hyrioth’s body as he audibly reacted to what he found to be a challenge, albeit not from Moraa herself. “Let them come,” he said with an ire in his mental signature which began to jump with no prompting other than her warning.



Even his own crew began to take notice of the enemy fleet amassing in front of them. “It’s an attack formation, Ascendant! Based on temporal displacement, our observers have registered the presence of one command ship, two assault ships, and ten fighters!” Ghildra said from one of the various communications arrays behind them.



“This ‘command ship’ of which she speaks is where our fellow Draenei are being held captive,” Moraa said, her mental signature even yet also marked by her effort to suppress a great deal of anxiety. “Your great…I mean, Ascendant, if you bombard their ship at this range, then our friends and family will die.”



“A worthy sacrifice to die for the sake of our sacred territory,” Hyrioth replied callously, much to the dismay of the two other Draenei lower down in the bridge. “I’ll have their names recorded in our annals as examples of the ‘good ones.’”



Though her composure remained strong, especially when the Legion ships began their advance, Moraa shook her head and mouthed a brief expression of verbiage. “My Ascendant, you misunderstand the situation. Bozel is unlike many other Eredar; he prides himself on his prowess in individual combat. Your triumph over the Burning Legion can only be cemented if you slay him personally! Right now, at this very moment, they mock you and your image which appeared over their scrying bowl; I’ve seen them do this to other leaders in other dimensions during our captivity.”



“A shining star is unharmed by the impact of a barren asteroid,” he replied with a self-assured confidence in spite of the rapidly approaching Legion fighters.



“Please, Ascendant, I beg of you!” Moraa reached up and tried to hold his forearm while he stroked his chin. A spike in the telepathic signatures of a few members of the Protoss crew caused all three Draenei to tense up, though Moraa didn’t relent even when Hyrioth looked down at her one-thumbed hands in offense. “Our brethren don’t need to die, and you don’t need your good name to be sullied by these trespassers on your sacred territory. Destroy all the escort ships and fighters, but you must engage in a hostile boarding maneuver on their command ship. Think of your reputation-“



“You lie…”



All activity in the bridge stopped, even the crew member in charge of defensive maneuvers. A sudden chilly wave overtook the ship, and every pair of Protoss eyes fixated on the member of another species who touched their notoriously self-possessed commander. Piercing into the cold atmosphere was the heat of a resentful gaze, Hyrioth’s red eyes casting a scrutinizing glow onto Moraa’s companions and then the Anchorite herself. Though all three Draenei trembled slightly upon realizing that they’d offended their only benefactor in that plane of existence, Moraa didn’t back down. She locked on to his irate gaze and neither retracted her embellished claims nor removed herself from his person.



Hyrioth lowered his hand, the same one he’d struck the male Draenei with, toward her head. Moraa visibly gulped, a movement which even Protoss recognized as one of nervousness, when his hand moved over her scalp. How easily he’d broken the Succubus with a flick of his wrist earlier wasn’t lost on any of the observers.



“…so well.”



Curiosity and confusion marked his crew’s thoughts as they watched Hyrioth react positively toward Moraa’s manipulation. He ran his hand over her hair and cupped the back of her head. She breathed more easily even though her sense of exposure left her wordless for a moment, and she fell into a more reactive mode of behavior upon realization that he was aware of her exaggerations.



“Such a pity that your lineage isn’t the more martial bloodline; your talent for duplicity would be a boon on the battlefield.” He ran one of his hand’s two thumbs along her cheek. “These Eredar, as you call them, are at a loss by their failure to recruit your Draenei.”



The rapid approach of the Legion ships could no longer be ignored, and the bridge crew mostly returned to their duties. “Ascendant, the enemy fighters have closed to a distance of five kilometers. Your orders?” asked Kyr.



Hyrioth didn’t turn to face the young man, instead reveling in Moraa’s mixture of hope and anxiety as she looked up at him. He didn’t hide, in his psionic signature, the measure of entertainment he drew from leaving his beneficiary wondering for a few moments.



“Prepare to engage the fighters and and assault ships with lethal ordnance, but leave the command ship unharmed,” he said, transmitting his mental message to the entire bridge, much to the Draenei’s relief. “We’ll crown our victory with a direct boarding procedure.”



The sympathetic vibrations sent out by his crew members was resoundingly positive, especially at the mention of a boarding maneuver. “Your will be done!” Kyr replied before contacting staff elsewhere in the ship for engagement.



“Your might is just,” Moraa said quietly. Her eyes briefly left his, perhaps because of a slight uneasiness at her flattery having been noted as excessive. The moment quickly passed, and neither of them acknowledged the brief revelation. “The Legion ships bear cannons which launch fel fire,” she said, returning to the topic once the bridge crew had returned to their work. “They will attack us from all sides very, very soon.”



“They’re attacking right now!” Ghildra announced from a power systems array she’d accessed with a servitor drone.



Hyrioth and Moraa both turned toward the viewport to see the ten Legion fighters surrounding the front of the Glazier in a concave vertex formation around the carrier’s bow. At a range of only a few kilometers, all ten of them opened fire, filling the emptiness of space with a neon green glow which burned in spite of the lack of oxygen. The fel fire glistened, conflicting with the crimson glow of the bridge’s lights and technological devices.



Moraa’s hope waned while the two of them stood and watched the fel fire approach. “This is the end,” she said, though her benefactor didn’t share her dismay.



“No, Anchorite; this is only the beginning.”

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 4

Neon green flames lit up the viewport of the carrier’s bridge as the Legion fighters released a barrage. Down on the main floor, the two unnamed Draenei held each other and whispered prayers as they coped with a series of flashbacks which, while unreadable to the Tal’darim Protoss, were implied in their mental anguish as they closed their eyes. Moraa remained stoic and dignified as she watched what she assumed to be her end approaching, tilting her chin up and pursing her lips.



“I thank you for your efforts,” she said to Hyrioth solemnly, assuming those to be her last words.



And then…the neon green lights flickered out and disappeared.



“Your thanks are accepted up to this point,” the commander replied, ungracious and oblivious to the symbolism behind the errant deathbed thanks. “I’ll expect more as this operation progresses.”



Her breath hitched in her throat for a moment, and she held a hand near her heart to feel her pulse. While she wondered if she was dreaming or not, the younger Protoss announced more battlefield statistics from his array. “Enemy fire dissipated after a distance of three kilometers,” Kyr broadcasted to the whole bridge.



Moraa looked away from the viewport while trying to retain her composure. “How…what sorcery have you which can dispel fel fire so easily?”



“This has nothing to do with us, I assure you, and everything to do with whatever trainees the Legion has appointed at the head of those ships,” Hyrioth replied disapprovingly. “Even if they’ve discovered the knowledge of plasmodia required for a heat-based attack to maintain internal consistency in the vacuum of space, the simple fact is that such projectiles have a maximum range before dissipation. Shooting a flamethrower from…Kyr, how many kilometers?”



“Three kilometers away, master.”



“Shooting a flamethrower from three kilometers away is the behavior of a rookie.” Hyrioth furrowed his brow resentfully. “They insult me by sending these rookies to attack us. This Bozel person insults me. He will pay. Ghildra, launch all readied interceptors; keep the manufacturer on hold before adding any more to the arsenal.”



“Done, Ascendant,” she replied from her control panel.



Intelligence shined in Moraa’s blue eyes, but she struggled to grasp all the technical jargon he’d used. “The Legion prides itself on the ability to set whole worlds ablaze…you’ve revealed a major oversight in their understanding of the four elements.”



“Four?” Hyrioth asked curiously. “There are at least one-hundred and twenty-six elements which can retain internal stability according to our chemists.”



“One-hundred and what?” Moraa asked, just as confused as the two of them talked past each other based on different understandings of the word ‘element.’ Neither of them could further address the topic, though.



“Master, our interceptors have been deployed,” Ghildra said with a measure of excitement in her aura.



“Grant out drones a warmup; at least these low-tech flamethrowers will serve a purpose on some level,” Hyrioth said. “Engage all ten fighters in an aggressive assault.”



“Yes, master!”



In front of the viewport, the carrier’s interceptors gathered like a swarm of hornets. The unmanned, AI-piloted drones responded to Ghildra’s general command input, executing the order based on pre-programmed battle tactics. The double-barreled drones flew without formation yet avoided each other deftly, zig-zagging in a distracting formation which covered the remaining kilometers between them and the ten Legion fighters at a rapid pace. Doubt radiated from the two Draenei down in the center of the bridge, but Moraa’s sharp thought process was swift and palpable both visually and mentally.



“Your ship launches many smaller ships without pilots,” she murmured; her keen interest contributed to the increasing amount of respect she was earning from her host. “Their enchantments must multiply the power they’d otherwise hold.”



“Enchantments…a quaint metaphor, but accurate. Behold.”



Hyrioth swept his hand across the viewport just as the interceptors sped into firing range of the enemy fighter ships. Like a swarm of hornets, the miniature drones swirled and encircled their targets in a cloud formation based on a geometric pattern which the demonic pilots were simply unable to predict. To the amazement of the three Draenei yet only the mild amusement of the Protoss crew, the initial dogfight was brief and one-sided. The fel fire cannons of the Legion ships were simply too immobile, and their projectiles too slow, to hit any of the unmanned robotic interceptors. The plasma cannons of the drones fired heat-based projectiles not unlike the fel fire cannons, but with much higher internal cohesion in resistance to the cold void of space. The plasma burned straight through the dull metal hulls of the fighters, melting the delicate machinery necessary for space flight and ‘cooking’ the crew members therein. One by one, the ten Legion fighter ships ceased all activity; the lights behind their viewports went dim, their fel cannons laid dormant, and nearly half of them exploded upon plasmodial contact with their fuel containment mechanisms. Just like that - with a fizzle - all ten fighters were sundered.



The three Draenei stood in stunned silence. Even the male, whose face had begun to develop a black eye after Hyrioth had hit him, seemed enraptured by the sight of their tormentors suffering such an overwhelming defeat. Hyrioth didn’t leave them time to ask questions.



“Orux, contact the manufacturing plant and order them to increase the number of interceptors by fifty percent.”



The response came telepathically though one of the psychic booster crystals floating down on the main floor of the bridge. “Your will be done!” Orux replied from the ship’s assault cluster.



“Ghildra, order all interceptors to target one of the two warships protecting their command ship. Choose whichever you find more tactful and ensure its destruction within the next two minutes.”



“Yes, Ascendant!” his most diligent crew member replied before waving the instructions into her holographic control panel.



“Two minutes?” asked the second female Draenei down on the bridge. She’d been attempting to knead swelling out of the male’s face, but her disbelief at Hyrioth’s command caused her to freeze up. And yet, per said command, Ghildra directed the interceptors to burn a series of smoldering holes into the left warship’s hull.



“This is…this is not possible,” Moraa murmured, speaking both verbally and mentally in her awe. “The Legion has chased us for so many centuries, millennia, and I’ve never seen them lose so decisively. They-“ She stopped right when the original rush of interceptors began to swarm around the first warship, setting its dull steel hull ablaze with the red glow of plasma-burned holes. The starboard portion of the hull burst due to the force of escaping depressurized oxygen, leading to a few dozen demons being thrown, writhing and flailing, into the emptiness where they froze and suffocated in a matter of seconds. “By the Light! The Light has blessed us in crossing your path; no one has ever punished the Burning Legion in this way!”



“Because you’ve never met the Tal’darim before,” Hyrioth hummed proudly. He could claim that he didn’t need validation from outsiders all he wanted, yet he basked in her obvious gratitude all the same.



“Ascendant, we lost two interceptors in the explosion of that ship,” Ghildra announced.



“Orux, add two more interceptors to the manufacturing queue,” Hyrioth said into the psychic booster, which beeped at him in the affirmative as his subordinate got to work. “Ghildra, engaged the second warship.”



“Affirmative,” both of them chimed in simultaneously.



The figurative cloud of hornets moved to attack the second warship but found themselves playing a game of catchup as the larger ship suddenly blasted off at a high rate of acceleration. Moving even faster than the fighters had, the warship sped directly toward them recklessly.



“Ascendant, they’re most likely aiming to ram us,” Kyr said from his array.



Hyrioth didn’t waste time, nor did he treat his foe lightly. “Dive below and reposition the ship to turn seventy-five degrees away from them. Force them into a chase.”



Kyr began to execute the command before responding, causing a few of his peers to telepathically warn him lest he remain silent for too long. “My apologies, Ascendant,” he said, radiating fear when Hyrioth didn’t respond and left him worrying about the possible later consequences of not answering right away.



Flying downward with its rear toward the bottom of the Legion command ship, the Glazier began to move away from the field of wrecked fighters. Naturally, the last Legion warship gave chase, though it cut across the arc which the Glazier had formed and took a more direct path. What the ship lacked in maneuverability it made up for in speed and a skilled pilot, and as Kyr drove the carrier upward again, the Legion warship closed in on them.



“Kyr, you curved upward too sharply,” Hyrioth scolded, granting his bridge staff pause.



“This oversight shall be amended!” Kyr replied nervously.



“Stop curving upward; that’s the first step. We can pursue the command ship later. Aim at a ninety degree angle to the backside of the command ship and fly straight.”



The younger Protoss flipped through his array in a minor panic, not so much at the potential for damage to the ship as for his commander’s reaction. The Legion warship capitalized on Kyr’s miscalculation in angle and moved within a kilometer of the Glazier, itself over a kilometer in length, and opened fire with the main fel cannon mounted on the front of the dull-colored vessel. A sizable neon green fireball launched directly at the bridge, slamming into the carrier’s shields and spreading in a wave over the psionic energy barrier. The metallic black interior lit up with a green flash which even overpowered the blood red glow of the Glazier’s navigation holograms, causing the three Draenei to wince in reaction to the offensive color. The shields held, but they were significantly weakened by the first blast.



“Ghildra, where are the interceptors?” Hyrioth asked impatiently, though his senior staff member was better prepared than Kyr.



“They’ve almost completed a full circle around the back of the enemy warship,” she replied.



“The command ship has positioned itself to broadside us with its armament!” Kyr interjected



Hyrioth could sense a measure of panic growing among his bridge crew; like Kyr, they feared his wrath more than that of the Legion, though he didn’t consider that a bad thing. “Focus on the warship; one target at a time,” he ordered, raising the mental projection of his voice to add to their anxiety even further.



Mere seconds later, the next barrage began on both sides, sending his crew into a worried frenzy as they began to rush in their tasks. The warship fired off a final blast of fel fire, hitting the carrier’s shields at an odd angle and, while failing to breach them, still weakened them further. At the same time, the interceptors attacked the warship’s engines, causing yet another explosion in space as the vessel was ripped apart by the irradiated blast. The command ship’s barrage of fel fire struck as well, bombarding the Glazier’s shields with three separate fel cannons which finally caused the light red grid enveloping the vessel to flicker out. A fourth cannon struck the top of the Glazier’s hull with a green fireball, causing the entire ship’s interior temperature to rise as the internalized climate control automatically dissipated the infernal burning sensation across the carrier’s volume. The response of the crew was immediate and more than a little panicked, causing the heads of the two Draenei down on the bridge to turn back and forth as they observed the damage control measures in real time.



The psychic booster beeped up on the commander’s platform first. “Temperatures in the assault cluster are rising beyond safe levels, Ascendant,” Orux said in an urgent tone.



“Shut down all manufacturing operations, power down the factory, and vent heat immediately,” Hyrioth ordered in a stern yet calm telepathic voice.



“One of the interceptors is half complete,” Orux added.



“Jettison it in the direction of the command ship as a false target.”



“Debris from the destroyed warship is fast approaching,” Kyr warned, his nervousness now plainly obvious.



“Take the most direct route away from both enemy ships and don’t stop until we’re out of firing range,” Hyrioth said, using the same stiff manner yet scaring the younger Protoss all the same.



“Our remaining interceptors are at the ready,” Ghildra added at the end of the rapid fire mental exchange which I lasted less than five seconds.



“Hold and wait for further orders.”



“Affirmative,” all three crew members responded, prompting the two Draenei down on the bridge to strain their necks while trying to follow all the orders flying around, and the unnamed female quickly reached for the back of her head.



“I think I have whiplash,” she complained, turning her head down.



Moraa looked up at Hyrioth while all three orders were executed seamlessly, her eyes having blurred when she’d tried to watch the rapid action outside. “If we had just half a dozen commanders like you, my people could have defended ourselves well enough to stop fleeing from the Legion every time they find us.”



“If your people had just one commander like me, they could focus on destroying this Legion rather than defending against them. The best defense is a good offense; don’t believe anyone who claims the opposite.”



He felt her reservations about his comment and turned his head to face her. Though not connected directly to the emotions of others like certain other Protoss civilizations, Hyrioth was still empathic enough to sense Moraa’s misgivings about his confrontational methods. She certainly wasn’t innocent, as the emotional scars she bore were deep enough for him to feel them when the two locked eyes for long enough, but her heart remained so tangibly resistant to his comments about aggression and war that even a less observant Protoss would have felt it.



“One day, you’ll come to realize that all which I tell you is correct and true,” he said, this time to a closed form of telepathy which would only be perceivable to her. “That is, if you live long enough.”



Her discomfort showed in her excessively long pause and the taught muscles in her cheeks and mouth as she forced a blank expression. On some level, she knew that he could sense her true reaction, but decorum prevented her from expressing disagreement to a host. “May the truth become clear to me,” was the only consolation she could offer.



The status reports on the ship’s condition prevented them from any further philosophical musings. “Moderate damage occurred on our port side; the surface material has been warped by the heat of the fireball which our shields couldn’t block,” Ghildra reported.



“Keep the factory on shutdown and divert power to shield regeneration; our interceptors should be held on standby for direct action shortly.” Hyrioth then directed his comments toward Kyr. “Keep the ship top-to-top with the enemy vessel and swerve as needed to avoid facing their port or starboard cannons directly. Don’t respond; just make it happen.”



Before he could dole out more instructions, he sensed Moraa’s consternation, and she turned to face him fully. “I appeal for a moment of your time, Ascendant,” she asked without even moving her lips, demonstrating how fast she’d adapted to the communication mode of higher life forms. It was for that reason that, out of respect, he tolerated such a request whereas he’d normally react to pleas for his time from an outsider more roughly.



“I grant you a few moments, but privacy such as what I maintain with you now will be unfamiliar.” He held his hand out to her. “Press your palm against mine and pretend that the rest of the bridge doesn’t exist. Think of it as an existential dream of which you were a figment but now exist separately. Only then will you have a chance of broadcasting your thoughts to only one person at a time.”



She furrowed her brow at what seemed like rather simple instructions. She placed her much smaller hand in his, twitching and almost pulling away when she felt a metaphysical spark at the skin-on-skin contact. Both of his thumbs on than hand clamped around hers as he pressed their palms together, and when he spoke, his voice caused her a measure of discomfort at first due to the blocking out of all other speech.



“Like this,” he said, lending her only a tiny fraction of his psychic power so as to avoid overwhelming her.



Her initial response was incomprehensible, sounding like a jumble of sounds in his head while she winced at a slight twinge of neurological pain. She was as persistent as she was firm, however, and once again proved to adapt to psychic speech more quickly than any other alien life form he’d interacted with personally. “Like…this,” she murmured, flinching a few times upon her first attempt at private telepathy locked out from any potential eavesdroppers.



“Yes, like this,” he repeated as slowly as he would for one of his own people’s children.



She steeled her jaw again and focused, working to avoid a headache from the neural strain. “If your…interceptors…open fire, my people inside…could be hurt. But my companions…disable their ship…remotely…you could enter and…defeat Bozel’s troops…personally. And my people…would not be hurt. You lose nothing…by…sparing my people from…bombardment. And…we…know how to access Bozel’s…teleportation link.”



Away from the prying minds of his crew, Hyrioth could sate his curiosity and speak to her at length without fear of his underlings mistaking his patience for mercy. “You do understand that I’m under no compulsion to spare your people, yes?” he asked, subtly using his psionic power to prevent her from suffering a migraine under the pressure of her brain communicating in such an unfamiliar fashion continually.



“I understand.” She added no further words, respecting his time and patience and thus earning more of both.



“Then you also know that your proposition amounts to, at the bottom line, an extended battle fought on your people’s behalf in return for personal glory only.”



She nodded. “Personal glory…suits you. Please take my…companions and I…to watch.”



He ran his thumb along the fleshy side of her palm. “You’re far too good at this,” he said, respecting her determination even when destitute and dependent on the help of an interdimensional stranger. Hyrioth then turned toward his staff, activating the psychic booster with his free hand to broadcast to the entire ship. “Warriors, rejoice! At this moment, I order you all to begin preparation for my boarding party to make a direct breach on the enemy vessel once we’re in position. I demand that the fight be brought directly to these trespassers.”



The voices of all hundred-plus Protoss on board rang to him, psychically speaking as one. “As you command,” they all replied with gusto, even Kyr who was frantically swerving the Glazier as previously ordered.



Leaving all his fellow Protoss to hurry in anticipation for the hostile boarding as if it were a holiday, Hyrioth turned back toward Moraa. “Prepare your two fellows on the bridge for this teleportation link you speak of. The onus is now on you to make this happen.”



Even when speaking in a manner totally foreign to her neural pathways, Moraa mustered a formidable amount of confidence when the opportunity to save her people was nigh. “I will show you…what my people are…capable of,” she replied, standing up straight and slightly thrusting her chin out with certainty.

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 5

Down in the bowels of the Glazier, in a curving hallway with circular walls, groups of Protoss ran back and forth, this way and that, passing by each other as the entire ship thrummed in anticipation. Holographic projections of the two circling ships outside, one Protoss and one Eredar, played on various lapises and broadcast nodes along the halls and above entryways, allowing the entire crew to see the two starships circling one another, top-to-top, vying for superior position. So busy were they that none of them even paid mind to the seven raggedy Draenei in tattered cloth hurrying behind the commander.



The group could barely have a moment to breathe let alone ask questions of Hyrioth.



One of many supplicants ran to catch up to the group, elbowing past the Draenei roughly and nearly knocking one of them down. “Ascendant, the manufacturing plant has sent a request for your personal authorization to resume interceptor production,” the random supplicant asked while bowing deferently.



Hyrioth didn’t even stop walking toward the teleportation bay. “Tell them that their request is contingent on approval from the damage control expert. So say I.”



“So say you,” the supplicant replied while walking away backwards.



The male Draenei with the black eye attempted to catch up to Hyrioth before being knocked back by yet another supplicant. “Your lordship, we-“



“Master, we’ve received a query from Slayn about the status of our picket duty,” the second elbowy supplicant asked while striding to keep up with their commander.



“Delay, stall, and obfuscate until the completion of our mission or our imminent deaths. Only victory is worthy of report.”



“Your will be done.”



“Please, if I could,” the black-eyed Draenei said with a finger up in the air, right when he was shoved back by yet another supplicant who popped out of a doorway like some sort of birthday party surprise.



“Ascendant, your favorite image feed of that Terran posting cat pictures has been deleted from their primitive communications web,” the third supplicant said with the utmost seriousness.



“Remotely hack whichever one of their officials is responsible for the deletion and rig their transportation systems to assassinate them with a self-destruct sequence. Those cat pictures were part of my morning photosynthesis ritual.”



“As you command.”



The third supplicant took her leave, and just as the impetuous male Draenei was about to earn himself a second black eye, Moraa prevented the man from interjecting on their way to a set of double doors. “My savior, we can better serve you if we know where you’re taking us,” she said while ushering her companion to the back of the line.



When the group walked through the double doors and into a glowing room full of daises alight with prismatic crimson lights, the Draenei fell silent, but not due to the awe of an ignoramus. Familiarity flickered in their eyes, and Hyrioth could latently sense their subconscious reminiscing about similar technological setups. The commander walked in the center of the circular room, surrounded by a row of circular platforms. A single supplicant manipulated yet another glowing array in the center, pressing holographic buttons which hummed with energy.



“I think you already know a teleportation platform when you see one,” Hyrioth said. He waved for Moraa to step forward with him while yet another supplicant entered, this one followed by a servitor drone. “Our only conundrum is that we lack the precise data needed to forcibly access this enemy ship’s own teleportation array.”



Ever ready, Moraa turned to face him proudly. “As promised, I shall show you what my people are capable above. We have an artifact which can override the Legion’s protective enchantments and allow us to teleport on board…we need but a few moments with your magical instruments to comprehend the most direct path of inter-arcane spellweaving.”



“Spell what…you certainly have a quaint manner of speech,” Hyrioth replied in confusion, completely misunderstanding her statements as some sort of similitude. “No matter. Our computerized synthesizer can decipher the technological traditions of any other civilization and harmonize your artifact’s data cores with our own.”



Without warning, the larval-shaped servitor drone popped open, revealing a mass of retractable armor shards unfolding into a hollow exoskeleton reaching out from the floating robot. Hyrioth removed a tassel from his robes and, unused to caring for the comfort of all the subordinates around him, disrobed entirely saved a simple wrapped and folded pair of underwear covering the most minimum of regions. “So we can - oh my,” Moraa stuttered while turning away awkwardly. Her hesitation was lost on her host, who proceeded to stick his hands into the unfolding mass of black metallic plates forming a computerized set of armor which began to wrap around his limbs, torso, and head in real time. “So we can…um…yes, perhaps your phylactery can elongate - I mean, establish a link between your ship and that of the Legion.”



Just then, the entire Glazier shook along to the tune of a quiet yet deep rumble, accompanied by the flashing image of fire wrapping around the ship’s hull in one of the communications arrays. “Master,” crackled Kyr’s voice over the psychic uplink, “we’ve overcome a temporary setback in our positioning vis-a-vis the enemy craft.”



“You’re hereby relived of piloting duty. Pass your responsibilities to Orux and report to the teleportation platforms to join the boarding party.”



A long pause alerted even the Draenei, as unfamiliar as they were with the Chain of Ascension, that a much deeper meaning was meant behind the reassignment. Hyrioth continued to hold still while his armor set enclosed him, not even intentionally waiting for the belated response.



“Reporting now,” Kyr replied nervously over the uplink.



The supplicant in the teleportation chamber still looked shaken by the ominous order to a peer but continued her work nonetheless. “Master, our teleportation platforms are prepared, but we have no uplink directly into the enemy ship.”



Now fully armored and in possession of a poleaxe bearing a psionic energy blade which he’d pulled out of the drone, Hyrioth didn’t bother turning toward the supplicant managing the room. “These aliens have accepted responsibility for that detail. Summon my Havoc robot as well as a squad of the first warriors ready to respond.” He didn’t even wait for the response as he regarded Moraa’s battered band of refugees. “An Ascendant does not personally withdraw from battle once their armor has been donned. I expect that your artifact will succeed.”



Moraa’s upright posture implied a measure of pride as she revealed a way by which her group could contribute. “It will succeed,” she insisted. “We obtained the artifact from them before hijacking the ship. Vasia, if you please.”



Another Draenei woman stepped forward and pulled up her torn jacket, revealing the object in question which had been hidden under her shirt. A cracked piece of rock, such a dark shade of grey that it was almost black, levitated above her hands. The jagged cracks glowed the same neon green color which appeared on the surface of the moon far behind the ship, yet even though the artifact pulsated with neon green power, none of the Protoss aboard could sense any psionic signatures emanating from the object at all.



“Your teleportation device can hold this as a catalyst,” Moraa said while taking the rocky triangular prism from her colleague and holding it up to the two Protoss.



Hyrioth motioned for his supplicant to handle the object and watched her load it into the teleportation array in the center of the room. “This artifact seems inert; how do you intend to use it?” he asked with a direct, almost cutting form of skepticism in his mental signature.



“We’ve used these before when escaping the Legion, I assure you. Behold the reverse engineering of the Burning Legion’s portal stone. May I?” He nodded in affirmation of Moraa’s request, and she then turned toward her companions. “Tavad,” she said to the man with the black eye, “I need you and Vasia to form the other two points of the triangle with Itri.”



The three other Draenei in question responded verbally, eliciting a measure of disapproval from Hyrioth which he shielded from Moraa as the caprine creatures formed their triangular formation. He still sensed absolutely no psionic power from them, and his grip on his bane reaper’s shaft tightened briefly as he braced himself to be disappointed. His lack of faith was disproven, however, when the three Draenei began to channel an entirely foreign energy source through their open palms.



Just then, Kyr entered the room alongside nine other supplicants and the Havoc to witness the strange ritual. All of the Protoss gazed in confusion as the glow on the hands of the Draenei increased in intensity, arcing from one individual to the other until all three formed a sympathetic link between themselves which nevertheless remained entirely closed to Hyrioth and his crew. When the triangle was complete, the ship’s teleportation array responded without the need of activation. The cracks on the portal stone glowed more brightly until the rock separated into floating chunks, initiating a neon green glow on each one of the various teleportation platforms in the room. When all was said and done, the three Draenei staggered, winded, but no longer needed to maintain an active ritual in order to keep the portals over the platforms open.



“It’s ready, your greatness; we all may enter at any time,” Moraa explained proudly. ”This will lead us directly into the transportation rift of Bozel’s own ship, which will take them by surprise. Your victory is all but assured, and we’ll guide you through his ship.”



“It is, and you shall,” Hyrioth replied before reaching to her. Much to her visible surprise, he closed his free hand around one of hers and pulled her up next to him, causing her to look away shyly. “Kyr, take these remaining Draenei and usher them through the portals alongside our warriors; you will enter last.”



The eyes of every Protoss widened at the public form of humiliation. Kyr looked much like Tavad had when Hyrioth had backhanded the man, and he took a step backward. “I…I won’t fail you,” Kyr murmured, the only form of protest he could muster.



With slumped shoulders, the disfavored crew member began to drag the Draenei to various platforms as if they were pieces of furniture. His fellow supplicants lined up as well, stepping in front of their caprine guides in order to vie for the honored first assault on the enemy. Hyrioth moved to a platform first, taking Moraa along with him on the center of one of the circular platforms as a mixture of crimson and neon green light enveloped them. The familiar sensation of disincorporation of biodata tingled as the pair was transported molecule by molecule across space time to a location inside a moving object.



For the first time in a long time, Hyrioth felt discomfort while being teleported. A bit of nausea struck him as the fel corruption of the Legion ship radiated in the transportation rift of the command vessel, and as his vision returned to him, the neon green glow was overpowering for a few moments. As if she sensed his nausea, Moraa squeezed his hand back once their bodies were reincorporated on the material plane, though her attempt as reassurance caused mild embarrassment to the commander. Seconds later, they found themselves in a long, dark hallway of dull steel walls, circular platforms upon which his warriors and her companions arrived, painfully jagged interior design, and décor which resembled torture devices. In fact, were the color scheme changed from grey and green to black and red, the interior of the ship would almost make the Tal’darim Protoss feel at home.



The presence of various Legion engineers reminded them that they weren’t at home, however. A legion of Legion engineers, ugly hunchbacked gan’arg along with a few impish assistants, turned to face the interlopers in shock. Once Kyr had teleported in, no further sounds were to be heard for a few seconds as the two sides stared each other down.



Hyrioth broke the silence. “Sound any alarms you like,” he communicated to all sentient beings within the vicinity, “because we’ll be taking no prisoners. Warriors!”



His supplicants didn’t keep him waiting. All at once, they began to channel the powers of the void and hurled blood orbs, crimson spheres of psionic energy which afflicted the organic tissue of the gan’arg and imps with rapid cellular degeneration. The demons brayed like donkeys as their flesh was deadened from the inside out in an excruciatingly painful fashion, and the Draenei all huddled at the back of their ranks for a dislike of observing such violence, even against their tormentors.



“Keep your people close to my support robot,” Hyrioth told Moraa while pointing toward the Havoc. “It will shield you all in the event of a sneak attack.” He released her hand and allowed her to fall back after a moment of hesitation on her part.



“I will shepherd them per your orders, but you must move quickly. Bozel will send his entire crew here to stop you,” she said while huddling with the six other Draenei near the Havoc machine.



The gan’arg fled, most of them falling as they were shot in their backsides by the blood orbs. One of them pressed a button seeping with green blood before dying, leading to an internal teleportation uplink to activate. A splatter of green sludge and a flash of green light heralded the entry into the battle of a demon properly outfitted for battle, a horned fiend with red skin and wings wielding a flaming sword. Almost a head taller than Hyrioth, the hellish warrior gazed angrily upon the piles and piles of demon corpses around it, and then glared directly at the Protoss commander in what a member of any species would understand as a challenge.



“It’s Grax!” Tavad gasped.



Moraa almost stepped away from the Havoc and reached out toward Hyrioth. “Your greatness, my apologies! We didn’t know they had a doomguard aboard, beware!”



“Then he is mine alone!” Hyrioth replied, leaving his supplicants behind to engage the doomguard.



As had been the case previously, the demon refused to communicate mentally at first, banging the hilt of its sword against its chest and bellowing curses orally. Hyrioth gave only one warning, sending a mental spike of pain sharp enough to make the doomguard flinch. Eschewing any primitive threat displays, he wielded his crimson version of an Aiur zealot’s solarite reaper in a swinging stance. “Speak with your thoughts like a civilized being or remain silent,” he ordered.



To be ordered by an outsider enraged the doomguard, prompting it to rush forward with its sword raised. The Draenei all averted their eyes, but the supplicants looked on, eager for either the display of their leader’s victory or the opportunity for everyone in the crew to move up one link in the Chain of Ascension. When Hyrioth changed stances to thrust rather than swing, they were treated to the former possibility as he met the fel-infused sword’s blade with the twin points of his bane reaper. The felsteel snapped under the psionic power of the energy weapon, leading to an empty swing which caused Grax to stumble forward on his hooves.



“Die!” Grax clearly thought, though not on purpose, as his broken sword met only air.



Hyrioth switched to a one-handed grip on his psionic poleaxe and grabbed the large demon by the throat. “You first,” he replied dryly while capitalizing on Grax’s poor footing. The Protoss pushed forward, moving in the direction of the nearest support column in the hallway leading out of the Legion command ship’s transportation chamber and slamming the red fiend into it. His supplicants followed enthusiastically, the Draenei followed less so, and an inquisitor rounded a corner into the hallway only to back off while watching the exchange warily.



Grax was strong, and he shoved Hyrioth away and followed up with an attempted pommel strike. He missed narrowly but held the Protoss at bay long enough to chant a foul mantra through his hair-lined buccal cavity. At the doomguard’s command, a cone of green fire sprayed out from his palm, enveloping Hyrioth as the grid pattern of the latter’s shield flashed. The heat of the fel fire was intense, dissipating Hyrioth’s shields entirely in a matter of seconds. Those seconds were sufficient, however, for the Protoss to swing his bane reaper and sever the offending limb. Grax hissed in pain as his hand hit the floor and recoiled in fear as he saw the energy axe raised above his head.



On instinct, the doomguard reared back and headbutted Hyrioth in the chest, catching the commander’s pauldron with a horn sharply enough to wreck that portion of the armor and deeply bruise the flesh beneath. Hyrioth was staggered, stepping back to catch his breath but raising his weapon offensively all the same and catching Grax’s chest cavity with another quick thrust. That fast, subtle, almost unnoticeable movement effectively ended the fight, causing the doomguard to fall due to internal damage. As if making a point to the observing inquisitor demon, Hyrioth raised his bane reaper multiple times, bringing it down on non-vital parts of Grax’s body and delivering a death as slowly as possible. His supplicants surrounded the gruesome scene closely, energized by their leader’s first kill.



“Do I have your attention now?” Hyrioth said while pointing at the inquisitor, who promptly fled further into the command ship while babbling more oral cries. With his shields replenishing, Hyrioth turned halfway to face his warriors and his guides. “Anchorite, where must we go to next in order to purge this interdictor of its crew?” he asked.



Moraa stepped forward while clasping her hands anxiously. “We’re at the halfway point in the ship; Bozel will be at the front. We must fight our way through at least five hundred meters of rooms, all of them full of his troops.”



No sooner had she spoken than had the reinforcements responded to the inquisitor’s alarm. From around the same corner of the hallway, this section with a much higher ceiling than the transportation chamber, a horde of demons of various types, cramped and clamoring together in unwashed masses from one wall to another, pushed and shoved like a fleshy wave to wash over the Protoss first. Hooves, horns, talons, and blades clanged as the fiendish mob closed in on them.

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 6

Like a wall of wrinkly, infected flesh, the demonic cohort aboard the Legion command ship barreled down the high hallway. The corridor would normally have fit the girth of an entire Khalai Immortal, yet the infernal troops alerted by the itinerant inquisitor squeezed through the hall with such fervor that those on their flanks were knocked against the uneven, pilaster-lined walls. Felguards charged shoulder to shoulder, their massive medieval weapons with imbalanced weighting and nonsensical extraneous blades raised like blunt instruments regardless of overall design. Between their legs, imps pranced gregariously and fearlessly in tandem with their compatriots, hurling fireballs with reckless abandon before they’d even moved within range of the Protoss and Draenei amassed behind their armored leader. There was no time to talk or plan - only to react.



“To arms! Slaughter them all!” Hyrioth transmitted not only to his warriors but to the demons as well, leaving no mystery as to their purpose on the ship.



The demons rushed, reaching the point by which the impish fireballs began to land on the invading Protoss. Their red shields flashed in the familiar pattern, blocking out the initial rain of fire and granting them time to retaliate. The blood orbs psychically conjured by the supplicants hit hard, striking against the unarmored upper bodies of the felguards and withering away their already weathered skin even more. Their bulging muscles proves for naught as organic tissues broke down and the portions of their weapons and sparse armor which were hit began to dissolve. Much to Hyrioth’s surprise, yellow flashes of light mixed in with the red, and he could sense an upsurge of panicked defensive instincts flare up behind him.



Without turning around, he addressed Moraa while keeping his eyes on the advancing line of melting felguards. “Is that you?” he asked, his tone bearing a measure of urgency appropriate for a combat situation.



Her answer was swift and sure. “The others,” she responded as if she were concentrated on a form of psychic power which he couldn’t detect. “You defeated our jailer previously, and then Grax; they now believe what they once did not.”



In between words, Hyrioth wielded his bane reaper in preparation for a forward press of his own; the felguards continued to advance even when the first few members of their frontline fell in charred heaps. “And what would that be?” he asked her.



“They believe that Bozel can be defeated,” she replied with far more certainty than one would expect for the belief of oppressed refugees.



Even if the Draenei were aliens, and even if their near-pacifism displeased him, Moraa’s words resonated. No matter how hard he tried to pretend that he didn’t care, the reality was that Hyrioth did take their sentiments to heart, especially hers. They knew this Burning Legion and he didn’t, and as he raised his energy axe alongside the first increase to his heart rate so far, his psyche could almost sense their foreign yet palpable faith.



“Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe!”



Not content to watch his supplicants and his newfound dependents shoot down their foes from afar, Hyrioth waded directly into the mob of diabolic demons with his energy axe swinging. His supplicants mentally directed their blood orbs to move around their leader, granting him the freedom of movement to rear back and swing the axe directly into the felguard crowd. His energy blade cut through the necks of three of them in one strike, causing their unwieldy bodies to hit the floor after their heads. They surrounded him as best they could given how quickly those behind him were shot down, and their single-minded nature allowed them to realize quickly that if they struck his shield enough with their weapons, it would flicker and flash more and more. They couldn’t match him on even footing in the melee, but as his shields began to give way, the felguards executed a swarming tactic, with a wall of them serving as a living barrier to the attacking Protoss and Draenei while a vanguard of their number formed a circle around Hyrioth to swarm him.



Even with the supplicants and Draenei providing support fire, the sheer number of felguards flowing in from around the corner like primitive space marines was incredible. For such bulky, top-heavy creatures, there certainly were a lot of them crammed into that ship, and every time Hyrioth struck one down, another came around the corner. As he cut and sliced with his energy axe, severing hands and arms and even portions of torsos, the dead demons began to pile up. The felguards were no joke, however, breaking through the Ascendant’s shields and then slamming their strange, spiky, top-heavy great weapons directly into the invading commander’s body. Hyrioth’s meaty mass was bruised down to the bone, battered blue. To the frustration of the demons, the bodies of their comrades glowed briefly as he culled their ranks in retaliation, the visual effect of his psionic talent for soul absorption. For every one of them he killed, his physical injuries began to unnaturally heal on their own accord as their spirits were consumed to reverse the very damage they’d done.



The felguards weren’t as stupid as Hyrioth had initially assumed, and when they caught on to what was happening, they panicked in the same manner which he’d witnessed with the Draenei. “We’re strengthening him!” one of the spiky demons cried just before Hyrioth slayed it with a strike with the butt of his bane reaper to the temple.



Much like the demons themselves, the fight crawled on for a few minutes before dying out. At the start, so many of the felguards had surrounded Hyrioth and joined in hacking away at his armor with their great weapons that they’d actually hurt him, yet they growled their frustration as each injury they caused disappeared. Each death of theirs brought him relief to the point where, when he’d surrounded himself by a ring of piled corpses, even his shields were replenished before the generator could normally have done so. By the time the invaders had cleared the corner of the hallway, the defending demons dead on the floor numbered over three dozen.



Never one to waste time savoring a victory-in-progress, Hyrioth kicked over the piles of corpses while turning to regard his troops. “Let these Draenei step forward,” he ordered, waiting for his supplicants to usher their guests forward. The caprine creatures moved in the center of the group, still huddling around the Havoc. “This is only the beginning; you’re responsible for showing us the next point of attack.”



Tavad tried to speak first. “Can we not go to our captured brethren first-“



“No,” Hyrioth and Moraa both replied.



The blue man looked as if he’d been struck at first, but Hyrioth resisted the temptation to continue speaking. Under normal circumstances, he’d work to undermine the social structure of a useful people in his custody, yet he didn’t do so. He needed them to obey their own leader, and, if he were to be honest, he admired Moraa’s decision making too much.



She waited only half a second to confirm that he’d left her to speak. “We can do nothing for them so long as Bozel is in control of the vessel’s controls and communications; we must strike at the heart of this monster to bring it down. We must lead our benevolent hosts around this corner, toward the front of the ship.”



Her people provided minimal resistance, merely wringing their wrists and swiveling their hooves on the ground. Hyrioth turned his head toward Moraa ever so slightly, impressed by her preference for offensive actions in spite of her people’s aversion to violence. He couldn’t quite tell whether he’d influenced her choice through his own actions or if she possessed such decisive insight on her own accord, and he wouldn’t be able to find out because of the braying and barking further around the corner from whence the first wave had come.



She looked back to Hyrioth, pausing in the subtlest of ways when she noticed that he’d already been looking at her. “We…it’s time to act, Ascendant. Bozel will continue to send waves of his minions toward us until we reach him.”



“Then down the hall we go!”



Hyrioth readied his bane reaper again, hefting the poleaxe-type weapon in a wide stance to keep his supplicants behind him. They moved in front of the Draenei again, following eagerly around the corner to meet a second wave which assaulted them so fast that they’d already fallen upon the commander before he’d even noticed them. A figurative spray of felguards bounced against his shields, throwing themselves against the red barrier without effect. They were followed by the foul, twisted visage of what had to be a number of satyrs which matched the corpses in the hallway behind them, all of them adapting their tactics to form a similar circle around Hyrioth.



“Thin their ranks!” Hyrioth ordered his supplicants, who immediately began to pelt the felguards with psionic orbs.



The satyrs were intelligent, hanging back and babbling profane chants to hurl fiery projectiles of their own just out of Hyrioth’s reach. When he moved in striking distance and cut down the first few of them, he was momentarily slowed down by the stench of dung and dander sticking to their furry hides, and they quickly burned away his shields when his nausea held him at bay. Their braying was more unpleasant and grating than that of a thousand donkeys, distracting him with the unholy chorus sung out of tune. Even when Moraa began to protect him from afar with a strange non-psychic ability of her own, Hyrioth found himself affected more negatively than he’d been with the felguards directly hitting him in melee, and he resorted to his own psionic reserves.



Reaching out with one hand, he blasted the satyr, profane nightmare versions of the Draenei, with a lightning surge arcing out from his fingertips. The red bolts moved like electricity yet were conducted mentally rather than physically, jumping from body to body while frying the organic flesh of the satyrs in a zigzag pattern. In a brief yet painful exchange, Hyrioth and his supplicants psychically mangled the carbon husks of the satyrs while they heated up his armor with their fel fire to the point where his skin burned. Their souls soothed his seared flesh like ointment, yet there was nary a moment to catch his breath when the last of the malodorous creatures fell.



The last hallway spanned half the length of the ship, repetitively decorated with plinths of bone and braziers of green goo leading all the way up to high double doors and flowing from one end to another with felhounds.



Barking and growling, the eyeless demonic dogs scampered directly toward the invaders, spurred on by the inquisitor they’d seen earlier and another succubus cracking a whip on the canines. Like a tsunami of scales and horns, the felhounds washed toward the group, momentarily slowed only when Hyrioth lifted a clump of satyr and felguard corpses with his telekinesis and hurled the dead bodies at the incoming wave of snapping jaws. As he let the bodies hit the floor, further ranks of felhounds crawled over their injured conspecifics, ravenous when they sensed the sympathetic vibrations of the Draenei, who were momentarily given pause even when standing behind a wall of the supplicants.



Hyrioth waved for the Havoc to hover forward. “Moraa, bring your people here with the support robot; it shall provide cover.”



He didn’t need to tell her twice, and she quickly relayed his orders orally - for the sake of speed - to her compatriots. They all huddled around the Havoc, watching the next wave of felhounds charge even when half of them had already been killed by blood orbs launched by the supplicants. “We stand with you!” she replied once her people were lined up, lending their support as dutifully as his own supplicants and making them feel a little less alien in his presence.



At the last moment, the Havoc initiated a force field, creating an energy barrier between the group and the demonic onslaught. The felhounds bumped into the incorporeal barrier, hitting it hard and falling beneath the paws of the next few waves which swarmed around the barrier. Their bodies piled up, writhing and snapping, as they all tried in vain to reach their supposed prey. Neon green cracks glowed along their bodies and their jaws as they attempted to consume magical spells in their vicinity, yet their anti-magic abilities proved useless in the face of the Havoc.



“They…they can’t consume your magic!” said Itri, one of Moraa’s younger, less experienced assistants.



Even Moraa looked shocked, if but for a moment, when the felhounds proved unable to either breach or consume the barrier, simply lining up helplessly as the supplicants burned and withered away their carcasses. “Your construct…it uses a form of magic which the Legion’s dogs can’t consume,” she murmured in admiration. Her eyes shined with the sober calm of a person still in the process of facing a phobia, and she stood with her hands aplomb, any sense of urgency leaving her.



Hyrioth continued to rest for a moment while his supplicants bombarded the felhounds with impunity. “There’s nothing magic at all about this…it’s simply science,” he replied while striding forward. He walked beyond the force field, un impeded when moving in either direction across the psionic barrier, and Moraa held out a hand for a moment as if to stop him from wading directly into the danger zone. The few seconds he’d taken had been long enough, and he could no longer wait after so many months without action. “For science!” he said with gusto while raising his energy axe and bringing it down on the head of the first felhounds which leapt for him.



Just as the force field’s duration ended, the felhounds turned their attention toward Hyrioth, though their ranks had been cut down so much by then that they could do little else other than line up for death by his multi-targeted strikes. The supplicants began to advance as well, passing by the Draenei to continue pelting the remaining demon dogs. Down at the end of the hallway, the two intelligent demons backed away.



The inquisitor, in particular, was frightened by the armored commander’s approach. “Why are the souls of our fallen gravitating toward that thing rather than dissipating into the Twisting Nether?” the eyeless, berobed demon asked while scrabbling for the two double doors. “This isn’t normal!”



The Succubus appeared to be either less easily scared than the inquisitor, or less perceptive, or both. “It matters not! These wretches are no match for the might of the Legion!” Her image faded as she attempted to make herself invisible, though the Havoc immediately locked on to her with its targeting system, revealed her position, and opened the opportunity for the supplicants to hurl their psionic orbs and melt her skin from her bones.



Stopping in front of the high double doors, Hyrioth bowed his head and channeled his psionic power. His brain swooned as an almost intoxicating tingle ran down his motor strip, tickling his cranium as his psychic energy built up. Before the inquisitor could even sound another alarm, Hyrioth let go of the mental power he’d stored, leaning forward and releasing a red beam from his forehead. The psionic blast provided a heated energy ray which violated the third law of motion and pushed through the thick metal doors without any pushback. The doors, each higher than a building and thicker than the hull of the ship itself, flew backward into an atrium with a sound loud enough to shatter eardrums for the primitive beings who possessed such organs within the room itself. The sound of the doors clattering far back across the ground even drowned out the sound of twenty more bodies being smashed, leaving the only sign of the carnage the remains of so many felguards strewn across the floor, crushed to death by the mangled double doors before they could even react to the intrusion.



Cries of surviving demons filled the atrium as Hyrioth strolled inside the oval-shaped room topped by a high ceiling lined with dangling chains. His supplicants and the Draenei followed thereafter, walking fearlessly past groups of gan’arg and wyrmtongue running for cover behind the various pillars and plinths lining the egglike atrium. Two of such pillars had been partially broken when the remains of the double doors cut into them, embedded like giant pieces of shrapnel and providing more hiding places for the scattered demons. Felguard corpses formed a trail leading to an opening at the other side of the atrium, revealing the starry space and portions of the greenlit moon beyond a vaguely shimmering green shield holding in the atrium’s oxygen. At the head of it all, facing down Hyrioth like a recalcitrant and unrepentant child, was the red-skinned demon who’d instigated the entire ordeal with a single off-the-cuff remark about Amon.



Bozel watched the Protoss and Draenei intrude upon his sanctum at the head of the ship, his eyes alight with angry disbelief. He’d been standing behind the same cauldron of green slop which he’d used to communicate with the smaller Legion ship Moraa had hijacked earlier, but he defiantly stepped out from behind it when Hyrioth stood on a central dais in the middle of the atrium, refusing to use it as some sort of a barrier. As the two men faced each other down, Bozel actually appeared to grow, increasing in size until he could look Hyrioth directly in the eye - albeit from ten meters away.



“I would have been willing to assimilate your people into the Legion’s ranks and make you our servants,” Bozel said while the two commanders engaged in last-minute bickering. “But you won’t even have the dignity of demonization. The Legion will wipe your people from the face of this dimension and erase your name from history.”



There were many ways Hyrioth could have replied to that, and in spite of being over a century old, he did possess an immature streak which would have allowed him to argue back and forth. Instead, that streak led him to directly engage without a drawn-out argument.



“Bring it, you overgrown chili pepper!” he said while wielding his energy axe.



And then Bozel did bring it. In the form of an Infernal. Dropped directly on Hyrioth’s head.

 

[Ihsan997]

Chapter 7

Contained entirely within the command ship’s atrium, a green portal opened up to allow the meteor to shoot straight downward. Before anybody could even react, the basalt rock covered in green flames crashed into Hyrioth’s shields, depleting them entirely upon contact. Though the meteor lost much of its momentum, the impact was still sufficient, upon contact with the Protoss commander’s helmet, to knock him to the floor with a dull headache. For a moment, he remained belly-down and dizzy while green fire raged around him on the floor, but even with a painful stiffness in his neck, his mental acuity remained sharp enough for him to realize that there was a malicious presence, one barely capable of thought, looming over him.



On instinct, Hyrioth rolled away and narrowly avoided a large boulder forming the foot of the Infernal. The stony stomp sent vibrations through the floor in a warning of the force behind the demonic golem’s movements; Hyrioth’s near inability to move his neck as he stood up, however, was enough of a warning - an infuriating warning - to remain alert even as Bozel began summoning several more, smaller meteors.



The Infernal attempted to clothesline Hyrioth as wild imps spilled out of the crashing meteors on the atrium floor, though the construct missed by a wide margin. “Show them the might of the Legion, my minions!” Bozel laughed triumphantly, unwittingly sealing his doom.



Growling in anger at the indignity of it all - of the sneak attack, of the whiplash he was now suffering, of Bozel’s sense of self-assuredness which matched Hyrioth’s, of being knocked to the floor in front of his own minions - the Protoss commander reached for his bane reaper, pulling the energy axe to himself telekinetically and pushing himself through the pain, stiff neck or not. “Remove the pesky ones!” he ordered his supplicants, who promptly bombarded the wild imps with their blood orbs.



When the Infernal attempted to clothesline Hyrioth for the second time, he didn’t duck. The wide, arcing swing was offensively slow, and the Protoss held up his axe in as a stopper against the attack. The weapon’s shaft met the Infernal’s elbow at a perpendicular angle, holding firm and causing the construct’s right arm to break off entirely. The rock demon stumbled when its momentum continued after the swing, and, without its arm to rest against the target, the demon stumbled. Rather than ending the altercation quickly, Hyrioth began to demonstrate a point to his rival commander, grabbing the Infernal by the leg once the deaths of all the imps had replenished his shields to protect him from fel fire burns. As he’d expected, the Infernal was clumsy, and once he’d grabbed one of its legs up off the ground, he easily bent forward and ran, driving the Infernal straight into one of the eight columns reaching all the way to the atrium’s ceiling. More meteors full of wild imps fell all around them, tasking both his supplicants and the Draenei with destroying them amidst the falling rubble of one three-storey stone column and one Infernal broken into half a dozen pieces.



Undaunted as of yet, Bozel began to pelt the center of the atrium with a rain of fel fire. Green fireballs exploded on the ground, tossing the debris this way and that, and sending Hyrioth’s entourage fleeing behind another force field generated by the Havoc robot. Only Kyr ventured out, running over to Hyrioth and sliding to the ground, ending just behind the commander.



Shame for his earlier failings that night welled up inside of the supplicant, and his desire to make up for his errors on board their ship was tangible to the psionically sensitive. “The souls of these wretches are insufficient,” Kyr said, referring to the dead imps scattered everywhere. He raised his hands upward toward the ceiling. “Let my sacrifice return your neck and head to working condition as a rebuke for the first meteor!”



Although Hyrioth had been facing down Bozel, he hadn’t advanced, instead having focused his psionic energy to empower his shields against the rain of fel fire, but Kyr’s supplication caught his attention. Grunting in approval at a cultural behavior which few outsiders would ever understand, Hyrioth focused his mind on Kyr’s life essence and, with a flash of red light passing between them, cannibalized his own loyal subject’s soul. Violently shaking for a few seconds, Kyr then fell to the floor lifelessly, his sacrifice mending the torn muscles in Hyrioth’s neck and the bruising in his head, returning his flesh and bone to pristine condition.



In Kyr’s last moment, his mind echoed his wish to every non-demon in the atrium. “I am but memory,” he sighed at the end of his life.



Rejuvenated, Hyrioth stretched and felt the return of his physical mobility. “His name was Kyr,” he said in a spoken ritual which caused a few of the Draenei to cringe in revulsion at the sacrifice of a comrade’s life, though Moraa paused curiously.



“May his death have meaning!” all the other supplicants answered in a chorus.



“Enough!” Bozel yelled, slamming his fist down on a podium next to his position at the head of the atrium, near the open viewport of the ship. The Man’ari Eredar began to grow again, this time reaching the size of the Infernal, and was finally able to look down his nose at Hyrioth. “I will set you ablaze with my furious fires of flagrant - ack!”



Cutting off Bozel’s sentence, Hyrioth sent another spike of pain into the Eredar’s brain, catching him off guard long enough to charge past the central dais and kick down the podium as a sign of disrespect. Bozel regained enough of his senses to float backward and shake off the pain spike, and the red demon grit his teeth in anger. In one balled up fist, he began to channel a shadow bolt barrage, so Hyrioth changed tactics. Instead of straight offense, he focused his mental efforts on overcharging his shields. Even without understanding what exactly ‘magic’ was, he recognized the attack and intercepted it, allowing Bozel to fire five, ten, then fifteen shadow bolts, allowing them to dissipate against his shields until the generator in his armor began to waver.



Before the Eredar could mount any followup, Hyrioth dashed forward, raising his energy axe in a feigned strike. When Bozel floated off to one side, the demon was met with a psionic orb floating directly into him, shocking him with its red bolts and searing the top layers of skin from his body in long, dark streaks of crackling wounds. The distraction lasted long enough for the Protoss to catch up to him, tempting the enhanced Eredar to attempt brawn over brains. Bozel swung a hammer dripping with fel oil, his face twisted in agonized anger as the burning psionic streaks continued to eat away at his skin. Hyrioth was faster, and he met Bozel’s fingers with the void-fueled blade of his axe, removing more than just the weapon from Bozel’s possession as the attack was anatomically neutralized.



“You insolent worm!” Bozel yelled while bringing up his uninjured hand to spray a cone of fel fire at Hyrioth which, once again, depleted the Protoss commander’s shields but failed to do more than uncomfortably heat up the man’s armor. “Your sorcery is no match for ours!” Bozel then attempted to dispel the shields, but his eyebrows shot up in surprise when the ability had no effect. “There’s no way out of this-“



A quick thrust of the energy axe to Bozel’s stomach cut off both the demon’s words and thoughts, ending his indignant rant. Without any further pomp or showmanship, Hyrioth followed up with more cuts of the bane reaper aimed at his opponent’s limbs, once, twice, and then thrice, not even granting Bozel the dignity of a pre-execution speech. The Eredar’s death was as slow as that of the doomguard earlier, but in the end, the result was the same: Bozel wasn’t even allowed to speak any last words. Repulsed by the efficient violence yet thrilled at their success, the Draenei moved out from behind the Havoc, moving to bow their heads toward Hyrioth in the same manner as the supplicants.



Tavad, half of his face still bruised, glanced around nervously at the debris-strewn atrium and all the demon corpses littered within. “Just…just like that?” the disheveled escapee asked.



Rather than dignify such shell shocked anxiety with a response, Hyrioth left his energy axe to float in the air just behind him and waved for Moraa to step forward. The two of them stood away from the others, though he didn’t conceal his thoughts from anyone else. “Your people contributed to our demonstration of glory today, Anchorite. I grant you this vessel, containing both your captive comrades and its transport capabilities, as a boon for your service.”



Elation dripped from the disheveled Draenei lining the atrium, and their orifices flapped as they verbalized their thanks to whatever deities their people worshipped. Moraa’s reaction was different: more thoughtful, more subdued, and betraying - in Hyrioth’s eyes - a more sober realism when compared to her followers. A sense of relief, as if her chest cavity had been constricted until a minute before, wafted off of her as she bowed her head deferentially to Hyrioth, and her fellow caprine aliens turned their adulation toward him for a moment.



Gripping her staff with both hands, Moraa rose up while keeping her head down. “Ascendant, allow me to give you sparse words with deep meaning: Bozel has pursued my flock for more years than I can count. On all the planets which sheltered us, among every people who granted us safety, none of them in any dimension could stop his forces before you. Any words added beyond this would be superfluous.”



Metallic noises emitted from Hyrioth, similar to those before, upon acceptance of her flattery. “There is no benevolence like that of a dictator, for we can’t be forced; our acts of kindness are always more sincere.”



Too enraptured by Bozel’s defeat to take offense to the practically sinful confidence in Hyrioth’s words, the Draenei refugees continued chanting quiet hymns of deliverance as Bozel’s diced body parts crumbled into green. For sure Moraa noticed, given her sharpness, but if she disapproved of the Protoss commander’s words, she hid it well. She turned to the side and motioned toward the viewport of the ship and the moon beyond. “Still, I fear that we may have brought misfortune to you as we have to others; there’s still a Legion base on this moon in your dimension.”



“Oh, that little thing? It’s nothing to worry about at all, my dear.” She raised a hand to her cheek at his term of endearment, though he refrained from further comment and summoned the Havoc robot to his side. “Ghildra, I eliminated the commander of these wretches. Start by sending repair drones to patch up the holes in the ceiling of this vessel’s bridge. Next, have Orux send out our interceptors to destroy any remaining space borne targets. I want nothing to leave that natural satellite while you take aim at it.”



A red-tinted holographic image of Ghildra floated up from the glowing optics of the Havoc. “Your will be done, Ascendant. What shall we do with the satellite itself?”



Ghildra’s question elicited a wave of sadistic glee down in Hyrioth’s core. So strong was the spiteful wish to salt the soil beneath his enemies’ feet that Tavad and another Draenei appeared visibly nauseous, and the supplicants lined up excitedly behind their master to watch outside the viewport. Even Moraa knew that a drastic act of violence was imminent, and much to Hyrioth’s pleasure, her innate revulsion to violence was tainted with a deep subconscious curiosity, however slight, in response to Hyrioth’s devious emotional signature. Even the non-psychic among species would have felt the awe in witness of the Protoss commander’s sadism.



“Glass it.”



A shuddering wave of ecstasy roiled between the supplicants, who promptly fell to their knees and raised their hands in honor of their leader. Were the target any sentient beings other than the Legion, then the Draenei would have been mortified by the energetic hum caused by Ghildra’s manipulation of buttons in the hologram. The tip of Hyrioth’s carrier was just barely visible in the Legion vessel’s viewport, and the red glow which began from the series of crystalline mirrors at the front of the ship shined like a star.



Then the purge began. Rather than reaching forward to close the gap like a ball of fire, the laser emitted by the carrier simply lit up into existence, connecting point A to point B. Shooting across miles of space, the laser struck the surface of the moon at a rapidly increasing temperature. The neon green lights of the Legion structures built on its surface flickered out one by one, then turned red, and then a blindingly translucent azure which reflected more light than an ice planet. Untold miles of the moon’s surface collapsed inward as the very topography was altered by the slow thrum of the carrier’s laser. Mountains crumbled, new crags formed, and most debris was trapped in the surface as the excessive heat of the laser burned the particles of dust on the moon’s surface into one mass.



By the time the laser stopped, the moon’s surface had begun to cool into glass, like a cage to view Legion specimens melted beyond recognition as a testament to a wasted effort.



“That is how we solve our problems,” Hyrioth said, quite amused though not as awestruck as either his own followers or Moraa’s. “And now this is our time to part ways.”



Moraa smiled and nodded. Determination and devotion to her people, molded by many centuries of difficult decisions with steep consequences, marked her every action and thought, but there was a sense of melancholy in response to his words, very slight and only detectable because Hyrioth was specifically searching for it empathically. She raised a hand toward her followers. “Go, release the others from the hold and deliver the good news. Itri, I’ll need your assistance to send our saviors back to their vessel…with the travel log of this Legion ship, we can locate more of our people and join them without pursuers.”



Many of the Draenei took their leave, showing entirely polarized demeanors as they strolled through a demonic dimensional ship without fear. Others moved toward the Legion command ship’s controls to access the primitive vessel’s archaic navigation system, and still others simply marveled at the speed with which Hyrioth’s drones repaired the hole broke in the ceiling by the infernal. Moraa let Vasia and Tavad to form a triangle around all the Protoss, appropriating Legion teleportation crystals in the atrium as catalysts.



Moraa walked with a slow pace, lagging behind her own followers in forming a triangle around the Protoss. Hyrioth intercepted her and laid a hand on the bare skin of her shoulder. Perhaps out of necessity, she avoided his gaze, and he could feel her steeling her heart for a goodbye which would be for her and her people’s betterment in the end. Cruel thoughts entered Hyrioth’s mind, as they always did: words to break through her emotional barriers, promises which would haunt her dreams, persuasion to keep her people under his care, or even behavior as immature as a squeeze of her shoulder. In the end, however, she proved the victor, defeating his obtuse displays of power via her understated and dignified reservation. The power-hungry would-be dictator made a conscious choice to let her and her people go with minimal attempt to hold her back.



“One day, in the far future, I may find myself caught in a dimensional warp such as your people,” he said only to her, allowing her the ease of detachment but allowing himself at little more than a simple goodbye. “And on that day, when I find myself stranded and without access to my vast power, I prefer that it be you who finds me.”



For the first time, flattery worked on her in similar ways that it did on him, though in her typical dignified manner. She didn’t remove his hand on her own accord. “I very much prefer that as well,” she said, sufficing with the noncommittal comment on what could or might come to pass. Only when he removed his hand from her did she turn away from him and rejoin the triangular formation with her two followers. She didn’t look his way again as she reached out toward Vasia and Tavad, though he could sense her weary soul struggling to focus on her responsibility to her flock in his presence.



Chanted verbiage flowed in tune with floating symbols etched into the air without aid from a projector, eliciting puzzled glances from the supplicants who began to wonder what sort of technology the seemingly primitive Draenei could access. Before any in the room could ponder the ways of their beneficiaries, however, the tingling sensation of the Draenei’s archaic portal swept over them, and Hyrioth found himself and his own followers rematerializing back in the bridge of the Glazier.



With all of his supplicant team behind him, the spacious bridge actually felt slightly busy, and his staff appeared surprised by the inexact location of their return. Hyrioth stepped forward from his own followers, walking up the platform leading to the dais at the front of the bridge facing the wide and high viewport. In the emptiness of space, he saw the Legion command ship for a few more seconds as the engines began to glow neon green. The ship elongated in a sort of spaghettification common to ancient models of starship before disappearing into the warp - and with that, Moraa and her people were gone.



Silence fell over the entire bridge as Hyrioth turned back toward his underlings. His armor damaged as a sign of a personally fought victory, he loomed over them like the leader of a death squad, grim even in triumph. Every one of his supplicants looked up to him for inspiration, their awestruck eyes gleaming with the expectation of a celebration - perhaps a rousing speech, a round of cheers, or even a prayer of thanks to the Void.



What were they thinking? This is Hyrioth they’re talking about.



“GET BACK TO WORK!” he mentally beamed to every member of his staff.



All of them scattering, hurrying to their workstations in the bridge or otherwise leaving the room entirely lest they incur his wrath. He folded his arms behind his back and watched in satisfaction as they cowered in his presence, their every action working toward serving him as a proper Tal’darim staff should. Turning back to the viewport, he looked beyond the glassed moon and back into outer space, returning once again to his picket duty in that region. Even when the hours dragged into weeks and then years on his lonely assignment, his victory over this so-called Burning Legion (and the commendation he received) remained in his mind - almost as long as the the Draenei and their clever leader.