Divide & Conquer 7

Winter is Coming: Tina Schmitt 2

In the end, there was a small castle nearby that was the only real shelter. It was occupied, banners proudly displaying what the primitive’s memories said was supposed to be a flayed man. But solving the residential issue was a simple matter, the one called Storm providing a fogbank allowing us to reach the wall, followed by Garona climbing over the wall and opening the gate for us.

There were guards that resisted, of course, but it was a simple matter to deal with them. The “Lord” of the castle was similarly dealt with, and his wife and children were rounded up along with the rest of the castle staff. While Soule played at being a noble amongst the castle staff and servants, I inspected the family.

The wife was moderately pretty, brown haired and brown eyed with wide hips and a bigger pair of tits than any in either of our retinues. Most likely due to the seven children, two of which still looked to be of nursing age. The rest ranged in age from what looked like three to seven. Four girls, three boys. I considered what to do with them, the children would potentially be a problem as a rallying point behind those that wouldn’t accept the new management, the boys especially.

Well, that simplified matters. Turning away, I ordered, “Garona, prevent an inheritance dispute.”

My half-orc assassin obeyed without question, as was proper. I ignored the screams of the children as I left the room, Tali and Yrel falling into step behind me, their frames tense and nervous.

“My Lady…” Yrel began, words trailing off as I stopped and turned to look at her. She swallowed nervously before continuing, “was that necessary? It seems pointless and needlessly cruel.”

The hall echoed the sound of the back of my hand slapping against her cheek, Yrel’s face snapping to the side before turning to face me as I snarled, “The guards would have used them as a rallying point against us. Never question me again, am I understood?”

“Yes, sorry. My Lady,” she said, her glowing eyes snapping down.

I glanced at Tali, her three fingered hands fiddling nervously but she didn’t speak out against me. Good. Returning on my way, I considered what the next step should be. Sooner or later our rivals would show up, and we needed to be prepared.

Draugur 3

I felt the strain on my wings as I pushed myself to fly as fast as I could. Revy had been busy the last couple days, stealthily binding a bunch of guards and Luwin as familiars to give herself more credits to work with. She’d just finished binding Luwin when a raven came in from one of the holdfasts, babbling about demons killing the lord. Luwin didn’t know the maester of the holdfast, but some of the descriptions made me think we’d found the surviving rival team.

I suppressed a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold air. Two Contractors dead within a few minutes of their arrival. Despite this version of Westeros being less dangerous than most worlds, I was extremely nervous about what most likely killed them. I just hope that if I was right, neither Contractor had taken the Dragon Heritage.

Shaking my head, I disregarded that line of thought. I needed to focus on the moment, I should be coming up on the holdfast shortly. Thankfully, there was a cluster of heavy cloud cover, a storm brewing but not yet unleashing its wrath. Were I capable of it, I’d have smiled. I’d always loved storms, even when most kids would hide under the bed, I’d be at the window, staring out and marveling at the power they’d held.

It was why Storm was my favorite of the X-Men, helped by the fact that Halle Berry was one of the first women I’d masturbated to… yeah, even in my head that sounded weird. Shaking my head, I swooped down out of the cloud cover, catching sight of the holdfast as I shot towards the trees in an attempt to further…

I was caught off guard when a bolt of lightning struck me as I was diving. It didn’t hurt, the element I’d chosen making it so that I wasn’t harmed by any measure of electrical energy, but natural storms don’t act like that. Which meant that the storm was being controlled by someone that realized I was a potential threat. Interesting, it seems I was at the right place.

As I came below the tree line, I shifted out of my dragon-mech form into my saiyan one. I could more easily maneuver through the trees like this than I could big and scaly. Someone would be out to investigate shortly, and I wanted to be able to catch them off guard. Climbing up a tree, I remained as still as possible, waiting patiently, until about fifteen minutes later a group of four wandered under my tree.

“Ororo said they went down in this area,” the only man in the group mused aloud, making my eyes widen and sparkle with barely contained joy. I was going to have a chance to capture Storm? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

“Assuming they were affected by the lightning,” one of the four women, a draenei in shiny glowy plate armor pointed out, pulling me from my internal fanboying.

“It was a bolt of lightning, of course they were affected.”

I tuned out the conversation, focusing on identifying the group. There was the draenei (I’d stopped playing World of Warcraft more than ten years before taking the Company’s offer and if I’d encountered her I didn’t recognize her), the man (a quick check of my scouter confirmed he was one of the rival Contractors), a young woman with a bow and her hair tied back, and what had to be Tali’Zorah. If I hadn’t already known, this confirmed it: accepting the offer to become a Contractor was the best decision I’d ever made.

Focusing on the group, I waited for them to spread out, splitting up to cover more ground. Now, who to take out first?

In the end the answer was simple. Despite the presence of Best Girl, I could hardly ignore the fact that one of the other Contractors had wandered into arm’s reach now could I? Doing my best to drop out of the tree quietly, I stalked up behind the rival Contractor and reached up to grab him by the head so I could snap his neck.

“I wouldn’t,” a voice said behind me, making me glance back to see an orc woman with a dagger aimed at my kidneys.

Reacting quickly, I leaned forwards, kicking behind me as I snapped my fist out. Muscle and bone parted before a blow that could punch through steel, blood and brain matter staining my fist as I spun around to face my orcish adversary. I could hear movement through the trees, as the other members of the group converged on our location. I considered my next action, before coming to a decision.

Shifting into my dragon-mech form, I grabbed the Contractor’s corpse by the ankle and took to the sky. There was a chance either the draenei or the human woman would be able to bring him back to life, in which case I’d have to kill him all over again. Since I had no desire to kill someone multiple times, that meant denying them the body.

I got blasted a few more times by Storm, but I ignored the lightning in favor of chucking the corpse as fast and as far as I could. I wouldn’t be surprised if it landed somewhere in the Neck, judging from the direction and how fast it was flying when I lost sight of it.