Don't Poke The Bear! (Warcraft/FurbolgSI)

Nothing would be able to describe the smell as I plunged into Tartek's gaping wound, the small and big intestines breaking to the unholy horror inside.

Barks and bones covered my head in its entirety. They muzzled my snoot, stuffed my nose, masked my eyes, and sealed my ears. I evidently hated the sensations, but it was necessary.

I couldn't breathe, but asphyxiation was only to take after a few minutes, and it would take even longer to be debilitating.

The entirety of my face up to the neck was encased in a multifaceted mass of bony blades, horns, and thorns pulsating with Life and Nature mana to rend asunder everything on my path.

Still, smell and hearing remained, no matter how dampened they were. My senses were powerful, a curse instead of a blessing in this case. Ancestors have mercy; it was horrific.

Rot wasn't disgusting by itself to me, but the unnatural one of the undead was. And my root sampled the fluids; luckily, there, they didn't have a sense of taste–thanks the Twin Bears– still disgusting wouldn't begin to describe the repulsiveness.

This stank was accompanied by shaking panic and confused, rageful yells of the abomination as I almost slipped fully inside like a parasite.

The almost was the key point.

Burning cold enveloped my right paw, and I felt a heavy weight settle around it, painfully frigid spikes digging into my paw pad and between my toes, touching bones and setting nerves alight.

It halted my movement for less than a second as I yanked hard, uncaring of the wounds sustained.

However, it was enough for two meaty sausage-like things–Tartek's fingers, I presumed–to find their crushing hold. That, I couldn't just tear myself off like before, well, not as easily.

'Let go, you rank shit!' I internally roared; the abomination was trying to pull me out with all its strength, like I was a splinter.

It didn't succeed.

I held my ground, gnashing my teeth and ignoring the pain. It was nothing. Even without biomancy increasing my strength, I would have held, but I didn't have that much time.

I grasped everything around, swimming in the vile soup of flesh while vines tangled in the flesh, going up to the ribs to do so, cutting up connective tissues, muscles, fat, and countless organs not even I could recognize by shape on the way.

The massive undead didn't relent from the pain of my magic; every spore was a miniature bomb, and my mana flowing in claws, spikes, and horns were red hot metal on fresh skin.

It howled in agony. But the chaos I was causing seemed to spur the abomination to act without restraint.

The scream of the lich outside was loud enough for me to hear through the wall of organs. However, it was simply intelligible even without my helmet, but he was furious.

More ice was added, sealing Tartek's fingers with my foot paw in a frozen prison, again, chaining us together and strengthening his hold manifold.

One choice was left, and I did it without hesitation. I had been working on it the instant I felt Tartek's fingers touch me.

It just wasn't instantaneous.

Autotomy.

It is the act of self-amputation to escape a predator. Even if what I was doing was only a close approximation at first glance.

The ligaments and muscles of my heel bone receded, as did most of my tissue in the paw, including the bone, following suit.

Localized shapeshifting mixed with biomancy was a versatile skill and a favorite of mine. It proved once more its sheer value again.

Like this, I was free, my paw reforming bathed in shredded gut meat filled with what felt like half-melted bodies and various fluids of multiple constituencies from ichor to bile and worse. Far worse.

The abomination was a vault of pestilence and shit.

Tartek's loud cry of befuddlement turned to genuine dread, or as close as that thing could emulate this emotion. I savored every one of its muffled bits.

Nothing slowed me down now, but the feeble convulsion and contraction of muscles I shredded with cruel purpose.

There was no point in targeting the bowel and the like; all of those organs were accessories at best.

Even if my mana coursing through them slowly unraveled the greater spell work, keeping that grotesque patchwork together.

Ammenar's faint voice grew in fury with an undeniable edge of fear, but the finer points were left out, too. He grew ever more enraged at my actions.

Good.

I wasn't happy about doing that, but there was no reasonable alternative.

Tartek or Ammenar alone wasn't an actual threat; the two and an obedient, coordinated, fearless army were.

I was powerful, already calling on the ancestors to enhance myself, and hard to put down, but not invincible. I didn't have the opportunity to summon the ancestral spirits in material form.

So I tore into that bulbous piece of fetid walking lard.

My ascension was as displeasing as it was brief. Vines with fleshy insides from my back mapped the monstrous inside of the abominations for me.

I still had little idea of what I was precisely destroying, only that I wasn't sparing anything caught in my paws and many tendrils.

Be that as it may, my blind and deaf climb soon reached the neck, where I forced my way through, using the cervical as ladders in this confined space.

I felt immense pressure from all sides, more than my neck muscles were capable of, and Tartek was strangling himself with simultaneous refluxes of acid that burned.

Yet it didn't stop me.

I tore through what probably was the trachea and, with full momentum and strength, stabbed with both claws into the underside of the skull. Probably the vomer.

There was a choked gasp, already strangled by me blocking the throat.

Encouraged by this sound music to my ears, my paws heated up with my magic, and from those roots with serrated bones exploded out, passing by the growing hole.

They went straight to the brain. I knew little about 'undead biology.' How they worked didn't make any sense from a lens of life, but they weren't instinctless golems.

They required something akin to a brain or enough structure to operate, and in that giant abomination case, it was made of half a ton of dead neurons with whatever rituals put into them.

It was easy to sense, given how much magic was up there.

The effect of my muscled scrambling on this spongy target was immediate.

The cold muscles that contracted either too rigidly or too laxly froze.

The abomination's hands around its thick bulbous neck, crushing its own throat to do that to me, went slack.

The chained energies of Arcane, Death, and Shadow suffusing the assortment of corpses for it to be more than a bloated pile of carcasses shook and started to unravel.

They didn't vanish; they broke apart, and like a heart attack, it caused a deathly backlash. The world around me shook. Tartek stumbled and began to fall.

I didn't wait to exit this fleshy prison.

The mouth was my way out, and I didn't make it pretty.

I shredded through the cheek, leaving me free, covered in ichor, rotting flesh, and more I couldn't name. It was sticky, clinging to my fur like sap and every interstice of my armor.

My helmet was partially absorbed, and I took a deep breath as my senses returned.

This moment was cut short as I blocked a rain of ice shards with a paw from which a bony shield layered with bark unfolded. I locked eyes with the burning orbs of Ammenar.

"I'm the hand of the Lich King! Come spirits, ensnare this beast that dares defile your master wo-!" I was in the air, the Spirit Whistle on my lips as the first words left the lich's non-existent lips.

Ghostly figures with horrific visages of sorrow and rage manifested around him as I reached his position. The undead gathered served as a shield of flesh and bones against my arrival.

Four green ephemeral figures joined my side, an antithetical mirror to those poor tortured souls: two ursa warriors, a hunter with her eagle, and a shaman using the seeds I sowed.

I couldn't keep them for long before they became too costly, but they ensured I wasn't isolated as I stampeded through the Scourge force. At least for the few seconds necessary. I wasn't the Wise Bear.

The effort from the act was so insignificant that it might as well not exist. I brusquely tore my way to Ammenar, the cold of his skeletal form humming with Arcane in anticipation.

Then, the ground he was hovering above bloomed with life; seeds randomly shot earlier came out like wildflowers after the last frost. Free and uncaring to the harshness of the world.

But those were more than ornaments; ironically, they mainly were quilboar thorns. They had formed a network, and now they pierced the frosty soil and, with mana flowing in them, Ammenar became their prime target.

He screeched, one of the thorns moving at unnatural speed from right under him, and stabbed his robe straight to his exposed ribs. A second did the same, then a third, then more, and none stopped there.

Pristine white bones were ensnared, and the thorns with me were endless as long as I had mana in reserve.

Alone, this trick would prove insufficient; they were rapidly dying, solidifying, and withering before taking any solid hold. But it was more than good enough.

Teleportation became impossible. Or far and fast enough to matter. Jaina's pep talks of four years ago about these spells coming in strong.

Ammenar realized this much and abandoned everything else; the gem atop his staff became a small, blue, dim sun. He was putting everything in it.

"Die!" The Coldbringer spoke with spite and venom, and his title became self-evident as a blizzard came forth in a cone my way.

The winds were so strong they sent lesser undead flying, but not before flash-freezing them and their larger ilk. I didn't dodge, I couldn't, I was already running straight at the lich.

So I braced, bone plate and bark forming a hasty shield for my face as I felt cold in the truest sense for the first time in years.

And it was more than cold; dark tendrils of doubt and anguish tried to claw at my mind, only to be kept at bay by its walls for the most part. The ancestors fought with me against this violation, the minute effect purged.

I just roared again, defiant and done with everything.

All his efforts to stop me were in vain, serving only to piss me off from the deep frostbite fighting against my magical regeneration. I suffered far worse, and this was nothing.

The ghosts he sent did little as well, insects that screamed burning from Life when I slammed through them. More solid undead didn't fare any better.

With a final push and roar, the howling wind brutally ended, my bladed claws shining verdant and crimson, mercilessly slammed down on the unprotected lich.

As if unable to comprehend what happened, his form remained frozen for a fraction of a second before shattering like a broken statue. It was cathartic.

The Coldbringer let out a last soulful screech of maddened fury as his body crumbled into seven pieces, then became ash, vanishing into the last echoes of the snowstorm.

"The lich is vanquished!" I breathed out and spoke aloud, "For the Wild! For Azeroth! Fight! Purge the land of this infection!"

My words reached far and wide; they were hollered back with the lungs of thousands.

"FOR THE WILD! FOR AZEROTH!"

And the Scourge went rabid. The carefully monitored chaos of the undead the lich kept under a tight leash was scrambled. Oh, it wasn't utter chaos; more intelligent undead reined in their nearby force.

But that didn't change the tide of the battle. Still, winning wasn't free from the other side of the battlefield, even with my support from the sky in my bloodwing bat form and the ground as myself.

The smartest fled in a panic; few succeeded in that endeavor.

Fewer would even 'survive' after being taken from the environment, and every living creature within the Wild and Horde wished to see them eradicated.

There were more undead than in this army. The infestation ran deep.

The Scourge force couldn't have been raised here alone. No matter how many thousands of quilboars were raised, it went deeper than that.

But that wasn't for the immediate present; squads were sent with our force, and quilboars worked together with minor disagreements that were quickly corrected.

It would take weeks to months to get rid of this pestilence thoroughly. Most of it was small, but none was harmless.

However, purifying the land wasn't my task; I delegated it. I was on healing duty.

The most critical first above all else, and as I passed from a male tauren, I regenerated the left lung and half the spinal cord from an abomination's strike, my eyes drifted to my next patient on the triage line.

He was the first quilboar to have spoken to me. He was barely conscious, but that was a feat in and of itself. Truthfully, I didn't see much of him in the battle, but he fought to his utmost for the glimpses I got.

That I could respect.

He was on thin bedding of fur with a half-melted body from the right side of his face to his belly from acidic vomit or such unpleasantness.

He lacked a left arm and leg. Both were stumps where the limbs started and were quickly sealed to stop hemorrhage and septic shock.

His spine was bent wrong, too. And that was the outside; it was far from the worst. I saw someone survive outside of myself, but to stay awake?

I saw more and more resemblance to ursa totemics.

Ramtusk tried to speak but only coughed up blood, so my work began immediately. He went to sleep like a little cub with the green flicker of a spell.

I did a quick full-body check with a pulse of magic that confirmed my hypothesis.

Ramtusk's biology and, by that logic, that of the other big tattooed quilboars I saw wasn't innate. This was the result of one or more rituals.

It differed from the Totemic Ritual since it didn't draw from a mightier ancestor species like the jalgars. Agamaggan kept the initial design, so to speak.

I could feel this much. It was closer to the result of an enhanced growth spurt with a skewed ratio of hormones to favor hypertrophy, bone density, and the like.

The signs were all over, and many were not clean.

However, it was stable, crude it may be, given the number of tumors–benign or not–I was plucking out as I stabilized Ramtusk's life force.

But whatever ritual was done to him worked; he was stronger than the vast majority of tauren bulls, and with far more endurance. Add aggressiveness and a lack of fear, and you end up with something strong.

It was fascinating, worse in many ways than the Totemic Ritual, but this was to be studied in depth. Unlike the former, it didn't seem hard-locked to a singular species.

It was worth an investment, given what I was seeing and the result I had with Vandel's basic biological augmentations before he fucking went to be a moron.

Streamlining and improving the process was to be done first, though, and it won't be simple. Yet I was getting excited at the idea, though.

If only Groot was still with me, he would share my joy, and be my ever-loyal and clever assistant. I dearly missed him; the ache of his loss didn't vanish and likely never would.

And his body, as part of my own, served as a constant reminder of my failures. I could blame Fandral or Malfurion for not listening as much as I wanted. The fault lay on my shoulders, too.

At least I avenged him for the small amount of comfort it brought me.

My musing as I finished healing the quilboar warlord came to a stop.

My eyes twitched, picking up two peculiar sets of footsteps from cloven hooves, and my gaze shifted from the big male to the two shamans.

"At last, he is taken care of. I almost believed you would let him die for his insult. Will he recover?" Charlga said, her voice cool and bordering on the haughty if exhausted, but the worries were distant as it was creeping through.

"The freshly deceased and dying are first unless of value to the Wild, cubs, or pregnant females. Yes, he would live. Don't worry. What do you want?" I said gruffly in quick succession, my focus remaining on Ramtusk.

It wasn't hard, but I was taking care of a pretty bad concussion.

One misstep, and my patient goes brain-dead. I was a petty asshole, not evil or incompetent. I tried for the last part, at least.

I lost people to that; mistakes killed. It wasn't pleasant. I didn't do miracles, no matter how it may look. I hated that many died and were dying without hope of revival right now, and I could do little about it.

"What Mother is-" Chagura, "No, daughter, let me-" The Crone's interruption was interrupted by my interruption.

"No, Charlga. Let her speak. She was the first one to show a modicum of respect to me, terror or not. You didn't impress me. This facade of yours only paints your people as ungrateful whiny sods." I rumbled, and that shut up the older female right up.

"Eeh-uhm-I'm-we are immensely grateful to you and the Wild for your help. Without you… We would be enslaved in life if we bent the knee or in death for our defiance. Thank you. Truly. I don't know if we can ever repay this debt." Chagura initially stumbled on her words but grew confident as I lifted my gaze to her, my frown easing down to a resting smile.

It was genuine. Strange as it was, people rarely could say that directly to my face. I would be lying to say it didn't feel good.

"I'm of the same mind." Her mother said after, her tone far more restrained and humbled, one might say, "I will honor our pact. You have my deepest gratitude, Ohto. If not for the Wild today, I would have forced my people down a very dark path."

'That you would.' I thought, but it remained locked in my head as I nodded. Chagura was seemingly surprised by her mother's earnest little speech.

It wasn't as innocently heartfelt, but it was good enough. I didn't come for boot-licking in any way.

Slightly pointing my muzzle up, I said in a calm tone, "This is settled then. Further discussion can happen when I bring the Great Boar back."

"What…?"

"...Pardon?"

I smirked at two reactions and said no more, for I said all that was needed. Then, I continued my healing work.

*

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