>>6297405<span class="mu-r">You</span> are happy. You really are! For one thing, you’re alive, and for a while there that was touch-and-go. You’re sore as shit, with a glorified zombie-wizard’s gross shadow-splooge all up in your wounds? Okay, sure. But that smug fucker is dead and dusted like few beings have ever been before, dragged kicking and screaming down into Death’s Domain. You’re alive, and your <span class="mu-g">sis</span> even MORE alive, being chock full of special Oriental super-sauce or some shit. That’s a win!
But Xoldur is dead.
You stand over the pale grey body of your first-ever student. His expression ought to be at peace, at least, having died (technically) in his sleep… But it’s not. His barbarically-handsome, tusk-framed mouth is stretched in a pained grimace. His eyes are half-open, unseeing but angry, defiant to the bitter end. No peace for this young fighter, then, even as his slayer joins him in the afterlife…
But then, maybe that’s how an orc would want it. Even unconscious, he died in a state of barbarian rage.
“We have to go,” Ayla reminds you urgently.
You turn to the cambion caster—your sister’s OTHER sister, from a different and deadlier sort of dalliance than that which produced you and CZ. You feel no great love for her even now, being the doppelganger of your old friend’s manipulative bitch girlfriend and all, but she’s earned her place among the Regiment’s ranks. Plus, she knows her shit: it’s her magecraft, and that of her man Veigar, which will soon allow CZ to have the life she always wanted… And, for good measure, turn your already-monstrous regiment into a true force to be reckoned with!
(A fortune-teller recently reassured you this was so… Well, more or less.)
“Carazzi is going to metabolize the last of the magic soon, if we don’t get her back to Patmo-Shoka,” Ayla nags you. “Remember how she DRANK it? ALL of it? That is NOT the intended method of ingestion!”
You sigh, turning your weary gaze from Xoldur’s corpse, and put on the brave face expected of a goblin Boss—an archetype you’ve become well-accustomed to playing.
“Yeah yeah, I hear ya,” you say with a smirk. “Ya oughtta be thankin’ CZ, ya know that? If she hadn’t got herself all suped-the-fuck-up, we mighta died back there.”
Ayla huffs and crosses her arms. Both of you look towards the cambion in question, and Carazzi looks equal parts sheepish and proud. Eventually Ayla sighs and nods, to CZ’s visible delight.
“Nonetheless, we NEED to leave, and NOW. Otherwise, it will all be for nothing.”
Now THAT, you can’t have. Xoldur—uh, and Nasir or whatever-the-fuck that fairy was called, you guess—dying for no practical gain would be a loss you’re not sure you could stomach… And you’re already feeling pretty sickly, to be honest, between all the bloodloss, the concussion, and the dark magic.
