For far too long, she had waited for the opportunity to unleash her mounting frustration. Her anger had found no purchase on a worthy target, and so it had festered within her and collaborated with her shame wrought by her own failures. The duo of emotions had festered, and, to the inescapable observation of those around her, it had seeped forth in moments of stress to create undue hostility to her friends and allies. While most needed to get laid to fix such issues, Tamadora needed to murder and destroy those who opposed the goals of Father and Emperor.

These fae in their “mechs” were worthy targets of her wrath, for they were as offensive to her sensibilities as they were durable enough to not be obliterated before her bloodlust could be slaked. From the memory packets that Father had used to forge her mind, she knew the salient points of what they were and what threats they posed. That they were a threat to Father’s work was unforgivable. That they posed an immediate danger to It-Has-Pockets, her “mother”, was unacceptable.

In all fairness, It-Has-Pockets had grown on Tamadora. While she may not admit it as such, she had found some measure of respect to dispense to the troll that had been shouldered with responsibility and had not just endured it, but embraced it with the proper level of respect and discipline her work deserved. She had matured, and while she could still be carefree and a social butterfly, she knew when it was time to be serious and to get things done.

Tamadora had been there for It-Has-Pockets during future wai’fudo, the mating season of trolls. It had been out of a strange sense of moral obligation to the female that had been the framework off of which Father had created her, and so Tamadora sought to ensure that It-Has-Pockets would be successful in creating offspring. She is still young, her Blessing is powerful, and her ambition is nearly limitless and in the complexity of fathers she courts to help sire a worthy heir. However, despite her growing affection for her mother, Tamadora did not have the heart to break the news to her about an uncomfortable truth.

Tamadora has the Template of Broodmother in her creation, and that gives her certain insights and Abilities as it relates to motherhood and that whole process of creating life. While It-Has-Pockets certainly and expectantly failed to produce viable offspring, as young trolls tend towards, Tamadora has long since suspected and all but confirmed for herself that It-Has-Pockets will never have children without the aid of divine intervention. Something about the process of becoming a companion to Father has led Tamadora to observe a pattern of infertility amongst all of them. To be fair, only It-Has-Pockets, and perhaps Torborg, are even trying to succeed at procreation, but there is certainly something amiss with all of them that makes the need for contraceptives to be far less than necessary.

However, there is still a chance that It-Has-Pockets could some day succeed, and, for some reason, Tamadora finds herself loath to accept any future in which It-Has-Pockets dies without an heir of troll blood. Even letting her die in general is a bitter pill to swallow, and dragons are especially designed to mentally accept loss, for such is the inheritance of near immortality.

That little extra detail provided a smidge more weight to her imperative to destroy these fae interlopers. Father had communicated the gist of the situation to her telepathically, and so she knew that containment of some fae within the prison they were crafting was a remote concern that was far outweighed by containment of a larger incursion and getting everyone out of this alive. With that impetus upon her, she wasted no time in making all haste to It-Has-Pockets’ aid once Father had teleported the first wave to the closest shrine.

Unladen with passengers, she flew forth as fast as her wings and her magic could propel her. In her wake, a storm followed, both literal in the form of dark clouds, and figurative in the tempest rising within her. [World-Speaker], her Blessing, had been corrupted by some unknown and primordial force, but it in and of itself was not inherently aligned with any element or school of magic. It was a mechanism of ultimate effect, and the underlying causation had been molded by her own choices and personality. For those that knew her, especially when she was angry, it was plain to see that she was the tempest incarnate, the rage of a storm unleashed without reservation. Lightning flowed through her veins, and dark clouds shrouded the full might she would bring to bear.

It is perhaps ironic that one with the thunder of the storm at her beck and call is all but mute, for her words have power. She rarely speaks, but her mind was now a veritable litany of condemnation for her foes. Her voice was the thunder, the herald of the storm that would destroy all in its wake. This duality of what corruption had forced upon her and what her own personality had manifested had melded into an uneasy accord that allowed for cooperation of seemingly unrelated and partially discordant themes. Tamadora intended to show the world how far along she had come in mastering her birthright.

Father had his own breath attack, one that was far less focused on destruction. However, it, like Tamadora’s, did manifest as something akin to a cloud. Nanu had been thorough in her instruction, but even an idiot could deduce a certain truth about how one should wield a breath attack that spread as a gas: don’t aim it straight ahead where you are flying.

While Tamadora could resist the fury within her own breath attack, its very nature was to be indiscriminate and complete, much like how a storm grants no favoritism or privilege to those that must endure it. She had learned the painful way that it was far more prudent to aim her breath at a sharp angle away from her direction of flight, such as downwards and to the side. And so, when the fortress came within range, and the mechs that assaulted it were likewise vulnerable, Tamadora adjusted her approach to take the mechs by surprise without catching the fortress in her attack.

She had to circle wide to line up her attack, much as she had practiced, and much like that favored and amusing memory that Father had imparted within her at her creation, the one where he attacked an artillery line at the siege of Berkerin. Unlike Father, instead of being directly above her targets, she was also to the side, favoring the fortress, so that her breath would expand away from its walls, and thus, pose little threat to her allies.

Her adversaries were too caught up in their own battles to notice her arrival, and she had arrived with all the subtlety of a tempest. Which is to say, none at all. Either way, they did not have the leisure to afford interdiction or retaliation, and so her opening attack was met without resistance.

With an angry roar (which wasn’t words), she let loose a dark cloud that flickered and flashed with barely contained lightning. It descended upon the mechs with unnatural speed, and the hapless fools were enveloped before they even knew what hit them.

CRASH! BOOM! POW! ZAP!

This is not a mere attempt to add excitement and action to the story, but quite literal for any onlooker to see. For while Tamadora was the tempest, she was also a [World-Speaker], which was certainly themed around words. Those observing could see strange and jagged ellipses with those very words within them, often with a yellow background and lined with red and black. For her breath attack, [Onomatopoeia Storm], was perhaps a little literal in how it worked.

Those words were not just for show. While thunder and lightning inflicted damage in their own right, certainly in a far more conventional way that married the physical aspects of nature with the magical metaphysics of mana applied to a purpose, the words the cloud unleashed were far more indirect, esoteric, and unusual. Furthermore, attacks of that nature would be so uncommon as to be wasteful to defend against, given that there would be far more likely threats that merited protective measures. These mechs were no exception, and the damage was telling in how effective her attack could be.

Servos snapped, armored plates shattered, power systems failed, and bodies that had previously been moving forward under a form of bipedal locomotion continued along their vector, albeit bereft of that pattern of leg movement that maintains that perpetual state of controlled instability that is always one misstep away from a faceplant. Predictably, the earth buckled and broke when many tons of mech crashed down and skidded along before finally stopping.

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Vindictive and thorough, as fae pilots jettisoned from their crashed mechs, Tamadora called upon the quite literal storm above her to unleash its charge upon them. Lightning struck, and exposed pilots, now standing on highly conductive material, put their meager protective suits to the test and found them sorely wanting.

Such violence felt richly cathartic, and a part of her that contained unpleasant and negative emotions softened just enough to dispose of the unwanted burdens that plagued her. Therapy, for all its proposed wonders, could ill compare to the restorative effects of crushing one’s enemies and bringing honor and glory to one’s flight.

However, Tamadora was no rookie on the battlefield. She knew that the enemy would elevate her to a priority target without question. She had already concealed herself in a mantle of storm cloud, her outline only visible when the lightning within it flashed. Even still, she, like all dragons, had access to [Illusion] magic to some degree, and she employed it to offset her apparent position. Despite her precautions, she still took a direct hit from the largest railgun on the largest mech still operational.

Fortunately, the blast hit her wing. While this would be detrimental in most universes, in this one, a dragon’s wing is all but indestructible while the dragon is still alive and has mana to spare. Ergo, it did not blast a hole in her wing or break its bones. However, it did still apply an uncomfortable amount of torque on where the wing connected to her body, which was a far less indestructible aspect of her being. Furthermore, the kinetic energy of the shot had to go somewhere, and, with her wing being resolute in not letting the shot pass through it, it absorbed the full brunt of the blast. This caused her whole body to roll while also pushing her laterally. While Nanu had been thorough in training her for this very thing, often through realistic and painfully real exercises, it would still take time and effort to correct her trajectory.

It was one thing to do all of that, quite another to do so while many of the other mechs were peppering her with their own armaments, often successfully. Pain beget anger, and while most would be blinded by rage, for Tamadora, it provided a serene clarity and focus of will. And, while it may be unrelated to this particular context, and something that she may not admit to anyone except those closest to her, it did create sensations within her that she relished. Perhaps it was the thrill of living on the blade’s edge, or perhaps it was her mind interpreting pain in a way most creative, such that it could become a sought experience, but her adversaries would be sorely mistaken if they thought they had in any way dissuaded her ambition to continue the fight.

Wounded, but regenerating through the injuries, she corrected her tumbling form and continued out of range of further attacks as she ascended to be above the storm clouds. She predicted rather accurately that these mechs were not the best at aiming straight up, and that they, like pretty much everything else in existence, could not simultaneously allow a singular weapon to attack in two directions at once. Ergo, they would need to choose to continue engaging her, which would put that at a disadvantage to continue their assault on the fortress or to defend themselves against the pursuers that were just now coming through the portals.

These too were mechs of sorts, but ones less mechanical and more akin to treants or puppets. Many of their cannons and lasers were made of flowers of other similar structures of a floral persuasion, but the end result was much the same. There were not allies, merely more enemies that currently were more concerned with the mechs made of metal. While there is an adage about enemies and other enemies, none below could be considered friends. Well, at least not those outside the fortress. However, Tamadora did find a small reprieve to prepare for her next move.

She put on an appearance of licking her wounds, all the while she manifested her magic to create a very specific kind of shield over the fortress, one that would activate for a few seconds for a very particular purpose.

It would block all sound, for Tamadora intended to speak.

The World Heart, that representation of the planet itself and its metaphysical presence, was poised to listen. While Tamadora only spoke one word, she had spent time in her mind formulating the meaning, emotion, and weight behind it, giving it a context that would direct its shape, such that the scale and scope of it would manifest in a way to her advantage.

“RAMPAGE!”

So Tamadora roared from the heavens, and so the World Heart responded.

The effect was as immediate as it was devastating. The fae below (and those entities even further below, as of yet unseen to Tamadora), heard her words, and they were more than happy to obey. “Rampage” in this context was an abandonment of strategy, tactics, cohesion, and alliances. It was every insult made fresh, every slight brought to the forefront of memory, every grudge honed and ready to be settled. Caution was thrown to the wind, and what replaced the organized battle below was a devolvement into a battle-royale.

There were no allies or enemies, just the victorious and the fallen. There was no restraint, caution, or negotiation, just unrestrained carnage and destruction leveled at anyone and everyone moving. The fortress, being largely inanimate and holistically neutral and unthreatening, declined to participate, and thus it found itself largely ignored if one overlooked the many errant shots that still hit it. The defenders, who heard nothing for a few seconds, and who saw the change in the flow of the battle, had abandoned any semblance of a final stand to tuck tail and run, which was largely the most prudent choice.

Adventurers soon showed up at the fringes of the battle, but they had the fortune of being too far away to be so possessed by Tamadora’s power. There they lingered, for none were inclined to intervene when giants with strange but powerful weapons seemingly attacked anything and everything at random.

They soon found themselves embroiled in conflict as undead rose from the very earth to join the grand melee. Given how societies throughout the ages found it in poor form to bury their dead with weapons and armor for the very issue present here, the Adventurers quickly deduced that that this batch of undead in particular was part of some grand and forgotten army. While they did fight everyone and anyone, they did not fight each other, so Tamadora’s voice had only been partially effective on them, which was of little surprise. However, the nature of undead and their resistance to effects of morale and persuasion would take a whole lecture to explain.

Long story short, the Adventurer reinforcements were now fighting for their lives against undead that sprouted from the very earth all around them, the whole army easily numbering in the thousands and growing by the minute.

In short, the chaos that Nabonidus had warned everyone about was only just getting started.

Meanwhile, the kobolds in the vault with It-Has-Pockets were trying an appreciably large fraction of their best to find a way out of their sticky situation.

“I cannot open the door!” one yelled as he grunted with effort to budge the very same and stubbornly immovable object, “It’s jammed. I cannot even get it ajar.”

“Gods, preserve us!” another cried out in dismay.

“Help me instead of praying to the gods!” the first demanded. “Has the pressure cooked that brain of yours?”

“I can’t,” the second replied while trembling. “I am so scared, it is like my legs have turned to jelly.”

Another among them, one that was older and more experienced with such things, found something amiss in their dialogue, but she also found herself a little spread thin to really ponder that deeper. It-Has-Pockets was in some sort of trance as she continued to babble a story that made less and less sense over time.

“Uh, guys,” the female kobold spoke in as calm a tone as she could muster. “I think she is busted or something. What should we do?”

“I don’t know,” replied the kobold who had just given up on his attempts with the door. “I don’t know that we are important enough to intervene. We don’t even have names.”

“You speak the truth, and it is times like this where one can get rather stressed,” the female kobold continued. “That is why I always carry around this box of Prancing Duke’s Gray Tea,” she continued as she pulled out a small blue tin that had the image of a noble figure prancing forward on it. “Prancing Duke’s, a name you can trust, a brand that delivers.”

“Woah!” the third kobold with the shaking body exclaimed, “that looks really expensive and high class. How can you afford it?”

“Prancing Duke’s is proud to provide quality tea at an affordable price, delivering the taste of noble luxury to the common man. Prancing Duke’s, a blend of refinement and practicality. Prancing Duke’s is available at most major retailers near you.”

And so they continued for a while, their minds distracted from the fact that It-Has-Pockets was unnaturally enthralled to keep speaking a story that became more outlandish over time.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep