It still pissed her off that she was being ordered how to do what she came here for. She didn’t owe the Fae Lord shit! If she wanted to kill xyr lackies by peeling off their fucking skin and feeding it to them she damn well would! But she knew that this wasn’t something she could refuse. She already accepted the gift by proxy of it melding with her weapon, and this was clearly a matter of fair exchange. If she acted in retributive vengeance now, it would be a slight against the Fae Lord xemself.

Objectively it was worth it. But damn if it didn’t infuriate her. Fucking Fae and their fucking tricks. She was under no deal but she knew the consequences. She grit her teeth hard enough to crack as she elected to smash through the wall of the building they hid in. Turned out it was thick stone, much denser than expected, but it was no problem at all. It crumbled like a salt rock under a sledge hammer.

What she saw inside made her even more angry. They… dared… to fucking surrender before she even arrived?!

The lot were in their animal forms. An abnormally large fox, boar, frog, pelican, crab, owl, otter, hyena, and stork. They sat in the middle of the room, where those that could were trembling. With a roar fit for a dragon, she smashed the ground between two of them hard enough to send a fracture through the whole building, splitting the mountain around her viciously. It didn’t split the whole thing by any means, but it was clear the damage ran deep, at least thirty feet of splintered stone deep in the mountain in several directions. “YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!” She bellowed, the look in her eyes beyond murderous, “You DARE try to get my people killed! THREATEN MY FAMILY! And then, when time comes to pay your due you just… just… sit in a puddle of your own piss?!”

Getting into the boar's face, she lifted it by the throat. She barely restrained herself from crushing it in her fist. That would be suffocation or exsanguination. Slow. Not what she “agreed” to, “Praise your master, pig. If not for xem the lot of you would be crucified on the town gate. Just enough food, water, and healing to live for a month or so. Pecked by the birds. Eaten. Alive. Until I gutted you like the subhuman monsters you were, stitched it closed with your guts still hanging out, and let the infection take you.”

Glaring down over the lot of them, she dropped the animal. “I! SAID! PRAISE!” She demanded, forming the rod into a heavy hammer. A deafening array of noises followed, silenced only as they were smashed into paste one by one, the mess that followed dripping into the cracks that ran deep from the impacts.

It was a very, very good thing the leaders of this place were immortal. They were soon to learn a key truth. Where death could not come, worse would in its place.

. . .

T’Kere spent a few long minutes outside the bloody, viscera-filled building to calm herself down. She needed to find the survivors before she hunted down the leaders. Once they were secured, she could cut loose responsibly.

How did she know there would be victims? There always were. She had been around for more than a couple decades. She knew this type. Given the way they taunted her and what they “threatened”, whoever was kept here had been through a terrible series of events…

Her search for survivors was cut short by yet another distraction. This time, in the shape of an overly-excited life dragon.

Kur’rekir’aker’, Reki for short, rolled into the space in front of her from a tear in space and planted his feet on the ground. He crouched, head on a swivel, trying to see any potential threat. The stone beneath his feet grew thousands of tiny root tendrils that shot out and took over as much as they could. There were no threats for these roots or his eyes to find, however. Once satisfied, the small, young dragon shook himself off and stood tall. He was four feet tall at the shoulder, mottled green like the color of leaves and underbrush, with bright green eyes and a toothy grin.

“I hop in and you’re totally fine! What was with that big rush of emotion, TK?” he grinned like an excited teenager, bumping against her like a cat might, totally ignoring how bloody she was. In fact, he even licked some of it off her hands - it was a tasty little treat. His eyes still flicked back and forth, just in case there was something that wasn’t immediately obvious.

T’Kere’s mouth was agape for a good few seconds before she finally laughed and shoved his head away, “Paranoid little twerp. I’m fine. Just got a little too ramped up about some stupid shit. I’m a bit sensitive - been a while since I’ve dealt with this kinda shit.” For a dragon, who were considered mature at 300, Reki was still very much a child at only 120. He was still older than T’Kere and Mar’Kir, though, who were 104 and 118 respectively.

Reki was a member of her old party. She had spent a majority of her life with them, and they were family to her. T’Kere was far closer with them than she ever was with her blood family. It was easy for Reki to bring a smile to her face, no matter how angry she was. They were a real source of light among them. All the same, she explained the situation in detail, including grumbling rather loudly about how so much of Mar’Kir’s hard work was undone with this stupidity.

“I’m happy I came if the local Fae Lord’s involved. I wonder why xe is, though. The others are around too, but around the village. Kind of anyway; it seems like there’s some extreme weather pattern going on. Some kind of magic, but the village is protected, so it seems to be on purpose. I was the one to head here since I’m so strong,” Reki said, form shifting to that of an adult half-dragon half-sea inzi. Anything draconic had a tendency to be so prideful, but at this point it was charming. Now that they could control it anyway.

“Uh-huh, of course you are. I’m happy you’re here too, but I’m going to handle the leaders myself. There are two of them, and they’re both immortals,” T’Kere’s tone made it very clear that she already knew exactly how she was going to manage the problem. At least, if it was among the most common forms of immortality.

“Sounds fine to me,” he said, his grin all the more charming in this humanoid form, unbothered by the sadistic undertones, “After all, you have a lot of catching up to do. Are you still not even level 130?”

This just got a roll of the eyes from the inzi, “Almost. Real close to it. Unfortunately my daily responsibilities to keep other people safe don’t involve plunging into any wendigo incursions. How far have you guys gotten by now?”

The dragon puffed up his chest, wings extending slightly. “145,” he said, clearly proud. For good reason, too; they had managed to get over a level per year on average. Even among adventurers, that was difficult to do unless you went through some real heavy shit.

Not that she’d let him get away with the ego stroking. “You’ve almost caught up with Mar’Kir. Not too shabby,” she teased, patting Reki’s head condescendingly. But it seemed to backfire, as it ever did when they tried to tease with subtlety. Everyone was pretty sure that was intentional at this point.

“Yeah well we’ll pass him soon! You guys should totally get back to adventuring. Take the baby with! We can hire a watcher and buy a pocket dimension or something!” they bounced a bit, excited to pass that milestone.

“Yeah… how about no. Though… We are probably going to have to take the bandit kids to an adventuring guild… It’d be nice to have you guys along for that,” she clearly mulled over it. The only thing she wanted even remotely more than to adventure again was to keep Varo’K safe.

“You know we would! We can come with you and make sure your kid is extra safe! That sounds awesome!”

T’Kere chuckled, patting the light-blue-skinned teen on the back. He was so boisterous. “Fine fine,” she said, “Handle the survivors for me, please. They should be somewhere else in this dungeon. And make sure however you tore your way in isn’t gonna be a problem, by the way.”

“Roger that!” he chirped, darting off in a random direction to look for them. She smiled after him but said nothing. Her eyes drifted to her freshly transformed rod. It gave her a chilling feeling that things were changing again; she wasn’t sure whether that excited her or worried her. With Varo’K to think about, she leaned towards worry. She was a miracle that shouldn’t have been able to happen - nothing would be allowed to happen to her.