Friendship is Ganking

by Teh_Zodiac

Picking

He ran and ran, feeling the cold whisper of death upon him. He trampled through grass and bushes, making his way through thorns and spikes of vengeful vegetation. It seemed everything was against him: every branch was slowing him down, every twig leaving its mark on his skin, blotting the foliage with crimson hues. His heart was exploding and his head was throbbing madly, but he could finally see the end of the forest, the road, and the secret shop. He could see the jolly goofy faced of the Shopkeeper, always unwavering and silent, even if you bought from him the most expensive item he had. It was so near, so near he could almost hear the torches crackling in the night. He jumped out of the forest, and into the empty road. It looked like there were no creeps in sight, ‘twas good. Less risk of getting spotted by that pesky Dire omniscience. He stopped for a moment, letting his ragged breath settle down to a calmer pace. He couldn’t even believe it! He was alive! The last fight had been a disaster, a complete ruin. They were better armed, better combined and all the more powerful. As soon as that gaudy little horned whore silenced him, there was nothing he could do, so he just ran, leaving his comrades behind. Not that he particularly cared about them! He couldn’t fathom how the Radiant could choose a bunch of ragtag, punks or just plain idiotic beings to fight for it! He, the Father of Gods, was supposed to battle alongside a dimwitted ogre? Or a perverted old man on a sickly looking horse? Never mind, it wasn’t important. He had the gold to buy a teleport scroll, he just needed to cross the road, make a call for the Shopkeeper and just return to the fountain to rest a bit. Then everything would be-

“Just where do you think you’re going, Zouzou?” That whorish voice hit him like lightning on a clear day. He smirked, knowing it would happen the same to the fiendish demon behind him. The mustached and cocky Zeus slowly turned around to see the smirking, beautifully twisted face of Akasha, the self-titled Queen of Pain, looking down on him. But she was alone and he knew it. Her annoying screams and elusiveness couldn’t help her this time. After all, he could strike anywhere, anytime.

She pouted, an act which many had wrongly considered adorable, and those many laid across the roads of the Eizalre Kingdom in the wake of the Holy King’s death, maimed and tortured but with a satisfied smile on their lips. He wouldn’t fall for his feminine charms. After all, he was the dominant type, not the submissive.

“Ff things ever fall out between you and that stick in the mud you call wife, you know where to find me, Zouzou…” She blinked seductively at him, but the King of the Olympus was unwavering in his resolve to show this demonic bitch who was the boss.

“Certainly! In the smoldering crater I’m going to leave you!” He answered angrily, waved his arms in the air, preparing to strike a world of lightening and hurt upon her, when he felt a small tremor beneath his feet and a coarse, yet calm and soothing voice behind him say:

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that” as a hard, smooth stinger was plummeted into his thorax. He vomited a river of blood on the dusty road. Everything felt dizzy and numbed down, and he couldn’t even lift a finger to cast a spell. The last thing he saw was Akasha getting pushed off his vision and a small shovel glistening with energy cracking down on his skull.

Zeus’ head exploded in a sea of gore, blood and brain fragments, and his aged body fell limply on the ground. Akasha turned around, knelt down and patted the head of a strange creature that looked like the inbreed result of a mouse and a monkey, garbed with camping equipment that seemed to account for everything one could encounter in every forest of every place on Earth. A shimmering crystal was strapped to his belt and he was firmly grabbing a glistening and now bloodied shovel in his right paw. His expression was one of boredom as his eyes drifted over the lifeless corpse; he wiped the trail of blood off his muzzle, yawned, chanted a strange formula and disappeared in a poof of blinding light.

“You did well, Meepo. It was a tad too quick, maybe…” Said Akasha, seemingly to herself, barely hiding a smirk while she licked her lips.

She got up and turned to face the strange, scorpion like being in front of her, who was looking at the ominous looking forest that sprawled behind the group. “But you, Crixalis, I didn’t know you had it in you. If I didn’t know for certain that you’re just a walking talking desert, I could think about it-“

The Sand King dived into the earth and appeared behind them, a couple of meters down the road. He started scuttling towards the forest, and addressed the Queen of Pain:

“I’m not like you, Temptress. I do not take pleasure in murder, especially if it’s avoidable.” He positioned himself under a tree and settled down, seemingly humming a strange and ancestral melody. Light started to bend beside him, like a gigantic lens had just settled there. Slowly it revealed in its place a tall figure, dressed in grandiose clothes that still seemed somewhat functional, with sharp, white eyes and long blond hair. He spoke with a voice that commanded silence and respect, and reverberated through the ether as if he were in a gigantic cave.

“Surely you will find some pleasure in putting an ignorant fool back in its place, Sand King.” He asked with a tone that expected for an answer an unconditional ‘yes’. Before Crixalis could answer, Akasha seemingly teleported behind the Invoker, leaving the always familiar smell of sulfur and blood. She put her arms around his shoulders and leaned to whisper in his ear:

“Mhhh, I knew you and I were a match made in Heaven, Karl” He shook her with a grunt of annoyance and said, deadly serious:

“For the last time, I am not interested in your attempts to bed me! Firstly, I’m quite familiar with the fate of all your partners. Second of all, I am a scholar of all things arcane, and I do not have the time for this foolishne-“

A stomp from a hoof as big as a boulder silenced him. From the forest had emerged, silent as water, a gigantic black horse, with a fiery red mane that seemed to be made out of blazes. On it, sat a knight, clad in a dark and ominous armor that seemed to radiate palpable heat. The entire set of armor was sturdy and tangible, but if you eyed it intensively, it looked like it was just an illusion from heat, as it imperceptibly shimmered and flickered. Invoker took a cautious step backward, and so did Akasha. Crixalis never moved its gaze from the ground, but flinched slightly as he heard the Chaos Knight speak, with a voice that seemed to come from the void between worlds.

“The Dire is calling us. We have to go.” He said, slowly rotating the ominous looking battleaxe clutched in his left armor-clad hand. He looked at them through the slit in his helm, a small fissure that was so brightly hot it was painful to look at, before slowly turning back his horse and marching into the forest. He stopped before his figure was completely hidden by the old, dry vegetation, trees and stump and branches that had already started smoldering and sizzling from the heat, and remarked, somewhat dryly:

“Now”

They didn’t wait for another word, as Karl the Invoker grabbed a scroll from his left sleeve, pressed his palm firmly into it and disappeared in a column of ghastly light. Akasha smiled at the smoking hole in the forest left by the Chaos Knight, whispered “Oh, scary, scary” to herself and teleported out of sight. The Sand King seemingly stood still for a while, eyeing the road for a while, before burrowing himself into the earth.

The shadows in front of the torches molded and recoiled to form a clear figure, a creature with deep, red eyes, a mask on his face and two painfully sharp blades in its claws. The Bounty Hunter, now fully visible, rested its back against a tree, wiped the sweat off its brows and said with a weary sigh:

“Few, that was a close one…” He watched the dead forest, and beyond that the menacing orb of evil that was the avatar of the Dire on this plane, the Ancient. It was visible even from there, and it dominated and corrupted everything around it, twisting a once normal forest into a devious looking trap of flora.

“So, the Dire is whipping up something…” He whispered to himself. “Better let the old man hear this, he will know what to do…” He said almost absent mindedly, and ran off into the luscious grounds of the Radiant team, vibrant and green.

---

As Sand King reached the top door of the Dire Base, he crossed a few troops running out from the barracks, ready to pick up a fight with whatever Radiant force they may encounter. He looked at their twisted bodies, the scary mask, the crude weaponry they had to manufacture themselves. It was to no use trying to have a conversation with them: it was unknown to Crixalis if they couldn’t physically talk, but every question was answered with a simple grunt. However, the Walking Desert wasn’t one for chit-chat, as he found the musings and worries of mortals as interesting as the white bones of unwary explorers that made his land shimmer under the hot, blazing sun. He scuttled quickly over the barracks, and spotted his companions all reunited in front of the swirling mass of red and black that was the Ancient of the Dire. Meepo saw him and waved to come near, while yelling animatedly:

“Spidey, over here, over here!”

Crixalis sighed and answered with a groan:

“For the last time, Meepo, I am a magic carapace infused with the sentient sands of the Shimmering Desert, not a spider” as he came closer to the Dire team. Invoker tried to eye down the rodent to no avail; the Geomancer was too hyped up to notice it. Akasha however seemed to pay no heed to the uptight wizard, as she giggled and knelt down to hug the talking mouse. Meepo, always used to the thousand of dangers of the Riftshadow Ruins, shriveled a bit before realizing it was the demon doing the hugging. For reasons unbeknownst to everyone but her, Meepo alone was spared the constant flirts and threat of erotic torture and was instead showered with affection. Nessaj, the Chaos Knight, didn’t seem to particularly care, but he coughed to remember them who they were facing. They were in fact all in front of the Avatar of the Dire, the entity that managed to obtain the services and the loyalty of all the Four Fundamentals, Chaos Knight included. Enigma wasn’t participating in this cycle, and everyone was grateful for it. Chaos Knight was intimidating and towering, but the gaseous mass of darkness was just plain creepy, and always seemed to know more than he let on. More so, the rare time he spoke, he did in cryptic and short sentences that made even Akasha’s spine tingle. In a faction where you could find demons, aliens and living nightmares, he still got the top prize for the freakiest hero in the whole Ancient Battle. Paying heed to the polite cough of Nessaj, they all turned around to face the Dire avatar as he called down on the mortal plane their employer. A column of green light traveled through the clouds and struck the darkly globe like lightening: the Ancient took life, and started speaking to them in a familiar tone they all knew, even if some of them still couldn’t believe that one of the two Crystals of the Old could talk like this:

“Sup guys! It’s me, the Dire!” the jubilant voice reverberated in their heads, its words marked by the rhythmic pulses of the ball that stood in the Ancient. “So, I know I asked for you without calling first, and I’m really sorry and I promise I won’t do that anymore, but this is serious business, really serious. The thing is, into the parallel cycle, heroes are not getting resurrected! So far we lost Dark Seer, Shadow Demon, Axe and Lycan, and I can’t find them anywhere! I know this has happened to the Radiant side too, and I would hate for it to happen in this cycle too cause I love you guys, but I’m not really sure I can avoid or block whatever it’s causing this to happen! I just wanted to let you know and… Oh boy. Oh boy. I believe we just lost the Tier 2 central tower. I know I just told you that you may die for real this time, but you really need to get out of the base and defend the last tower! We can’t afford to lose anymore cycles. Don’t worry though; I’ll be scourging dimensions, looking for the cause of this mess! Peace, good luck and have fun!”

With another column of light, the Dire disappeared just as quick as it came, leaving most of them with a state of the mind that could easily described by the locution “Eh, whatever”. Sand King was immortal, and even if its carapace was shattered, its mind would just fly back to the Shimmering Desert. Akasha was pretty much the same: death in this realm meant she was just going back to the Seven Hells. Invoker was just too confident to think anything in this battle could kill him, and Meepo was already used to constantly get thrown in deadly situations. As for Chaos Knight, he just didn’t care. The only thing he cared about was to snuff out the Light before it was too late. However, this wasn’t what they wished for. They all had reasons to fight for the Dire, as they all a contract or a pact of some sort with the cheerful Ancient, and this was a fairly big bump in the road. Still, their lineup was the best in all the cycles, as they had never lost a single match before, and this wasn’t going to be the first. Their coordination and knowledge of each other’s limits and strengths was so great that they didn’t even need to actually talk to one another to coordinate attacks. Even if the relationships between them, a giant talking scorpion, an arrogant immortal mage, a demon with a love for sexual undertones and torture, a mouse scavenger and a walking, head bashing personification of chaos, were less than ideal, and if many of them didn’t even had the concept of care and love, they could still be called, with a very loose use of the word, “friends”.

The super sociopathic friends rushed out of the Dire base, and saw the road clad in darkness. Indeed, there were not any towers left in the central lane, and the pitch black shadows of the night combined with the natural fog that seemed to be in all battlefields made spotting an enemy much harder. Even the expert Meepo, the one with the most experience with rough terrain and difficult meteorological conditions, couldn’t see that far. Still, they had to do something. There wouldn’t be any more creeps for a while, and it would take just a single push to open a path to the Ancient, and it wasn’t something they could afford in the current situation. Chaos Knight didn’t even wait for them to reach a consensus, and started walking down the road slowly, turning his head around to catch any possible sounds. Sand King quickly scuttled beside him, soon followed by Meepo and Akasha, as Invoker evoked two Forge Spirits to keep guard, an Ice Wall to seal the entrance, and quickly ran to reach them and close the line. The forest was especially silent, and even the small camps filled with ogres and kobolds, usually quite noisy fellows that could be hear from miles, couldn't be heard. They had probably been picked out clean, and that made the Dire team all the more wary of their surroundings. The objective was to destroy the Radiant tower: it would grant them some room to retreat and think about the mess the Dire told them about. The trek from the base to the river was a lengthy one, at least three kilometers of forest and darkness. The group marched forward, and Meepo smelled the air repeatedly, trying to pick up some foreign scent that could reveal the position of the Radiant team, but the search yielded nothing: there was only the overwhelming scent of decaying trees. He clutched the shovel firmly, and started fidgeting with the big, shining gem hanging from his belt. If push came to shove, he would have to use it. He didn’t like it much: the splitting and the feeling of controlling 3 bodies was disorienting and weird, even if it made him much more lethal. Akasha was playing with her poisoned dagger, seemingly oblivious to the tense atmosphere that weighted on her teammates. Three orbs of purple energy rotated around Invoker as he chanted complicated formulas and spells, preparing for a battle. After half an hour of walking, they could finally see the flickering and weak fires of the torches that were all around the river. Chaos Knight stopped before the small slope, and so did the others. They heard the familiar march of a creep wave behind them; it was best to wait for them and proceed with their cover. They didn’t account for much in a battle, but better to have them that to regret not having meat shields. The creeps passed beside them, without even looking at them, grunting and panting yet never stopping: as they descended the small slope that made possible to cross the river in its choke point, the Dire team followed, and when the hooves of Armageddon, Nessaj’s horse, touched the water, the water sizzled and evaporated. Akasha teleported beside him and said in a sultry tone:

“Chaos Knight, have I ever told you that you’re quite… hot?” She finished her sentence with a small giggle. Nessaj, not bothering to turn around to answer her, just responded in a flat tone:

“Yes. Twice, in fact.” That remark got a small, dry laugh from Sand King and Invoker, while Meepo looked quite confused, as the joke had just passed over his furry head. Akasha turned around, a bit of crimson on her face, and said angrily:

“Ehi, stop laug-“as a sharp, curved blade suddenly appeared in her chest. She coughed a stream of red blood, her eyes reduced to pins that tried to point out just what had stabbed her. The others could see the shape behind her, a blur that grasped the sword that was currently driving itself into Akasha’s thorax, and that same blur had just thrown a shuriken that firmly planted himself into the shoulder of Invoker, who didn't even have the time to recoil in pain; like Meepo, who was already moving his left paw, strands of light coming out of it and forming a net of some sort, like Sand King, who had started to wag its tail, sending out waves of power that rippled the earth like water, like Chaos Knight, his ominous axe descending down on the attacker. They were not fast enough, for it all happened in an instant: as soon as the blade made its way through the Queen of Pain, a wave of burning light invested them like boiling oil, making their skin scream from the pain. A wall of fire came with it, and the blur of blades. They all saw a mask of ivory, a sword cutting through them repeatedly just as easily as butter, as they all fell down, head first, into the murky river. The last thing they head wasn’t the howls of the flames, or the clashing of blades, but an idiot arguing with another idiot:

“I got them first!”

“No, I did!”

And then all fell silent and dark.

---

With a sharp gasp, she woke up. Her eyes darted around as she touched her breasts to feel the blade that had been piercing her, but there was only smooth skin. She felt the soft touch of grass on her back, and she saw a clear blue sky, a thing she had not seen in a very long time, streaking by occasional stains of black, the fronds of trees. Trees that looked healthy, green and flourishing. For her, a sight so pacific and bucolic was new and strange, as she was accustomed to ghastly forests and plains of brimstone and magma. It was not unpleasant, but she still felt out of place. She heard a pained groan, and immediately got up, startled and still on the edge, but what she saw in front of her was comforting if not amusing: Meepo was entangled in a tree, hanging by his belt, and has just started to wake up. Chaos Knight somehow had got himself inside a trunk, with only his head poking from the other side. Sand King was on his back, and couldn’t seemingly get up; his scorpion legs waved and squirmed as he silently cursed in a tongue Akasha didn’t know. Invoker was head butting the ground. She just couldn’t resist and started laughing out loud, drawing a venomous stare from Crixalis and an angry grunt from Invoker. She teleported beside a struggling Meepo, grabbed him and teleported back to the ground. He quickly started searching for something, before finally settling down as he found his crystal still bound to his belt. He looked up at the Queen of Pain and smiled. Akasha squealed in delight and knelt down to hug him.

“Oh Meepo, you are just so adorable!”

He waved a paw in front her face and said with a pained breath:

“Miss, I can’t- can’t breathe!” Akasha released him from the bear hug and got up, all while giggling. Invoker had managed to get his head out of the dirt, and looked at the two with sharp, annoyed eyes. Meepo had noticed the difficulty Crixalis was facing to get back on his legs, so he just poked him a bit with his shovel, enough for the Sand King to turn around and be able to walk once more. He looked at the rodent and said with a solemn voice:

“My thanks to you.”

With an annoyed grunt, Chaos Knight flexed and removed his head and half his body from the trunk, practically sawing the tree in half. He pointed a hand at the ground and whispered something, yet nothing happened.

“This is strange.” He said with his usual dreary voice as he turned around to face his teammates “I can’t evoke Armageddon.”

Silence fell, as they all looked around themselves to get a better understanding of their surroundings. It looked like they were in a small clearing of a mundane, normal forest. Not the dead ones of the Dire side or the unrealistically beautiful of the Radiant. Just a regular forest.

Meepo was the first one to speak, asking to clear a doubt that plagued all of them.

“We did die back there, right?” He said with a curious tone.

“That we did. Yet we’re not in the Fountain.” Said Sand King plainly, as stating a fact.

“Well, we can see that” retorted Akasha with a dry edge to her voice. “But if we’re not in the Fountain, where are we? I know that Eredar liked to toy with the souls in his dominion by making them believe they are still alive and kicking but this is not case, I can feel it. And he’s on our team.”

Meepo rested the chin on his shovel, sighed and said wearily:

“You never know with that Shadow Demon fellow. But I’ve worked with the guy, and it doesn’t look like it’s his mojo jojo.” He looked at Invoker, who was busy looking at the sky, and asked him: “Ehi, Invoker! You know where we are?”

He glared at him, adjusted his fancy dress and answered, anger and annoyance oozing from his voice as usual.

“I don’t, rat.” Meepo seemingly didn’t think of the epithet as an insult.”We’re not in the Earth plane anymore. This dimension is seeping with magical energy, you should all feel it. The ground is especially rich in mana, something you should notice, Geomancer.”

As he mentioned, the talking rodent touched the ground curiously, and whispered a small enchantment. From the tip of his claws started to seep out strands of pure, white light. The trails organized themselves instantly into a net of luminous energy that Meepo waved around a bit before making it disappear with another disappear. His eyes were wide with awe as he said:

“Incredible. It didn’t even feel like I needed to use any mana at all!”

Invoker coughed and everyone turned back to look at him, except for the Chaos Knight, who was busy staring down the sky. It was strange to see him without his horse as it had been a constant presence in the squad and a team mate in his own right, but it didn’t make him any less menacing.

“Because you didn’t. Unlike the Earth Plane, where the natural, floating mana in the air and the ground was absorbed by the Ancients, in this plane we have no need to draw upon our own reserves to fuel our spells and abilities. They are only limited by our stamina and willingness to use them.” He said with a teacher-like tone, as he nodded to himself with a smug, satisfied smile.

“It does feel rather different…” said Akasha “It’s like being submerged into liquid power. I can’t believe I didn’t realize it as soon as I woke up!” She spun around and appeared thirty meters above, floating in the air, before landing again in a blur of red and sulfur in the same spot. She started laughing, almost hysterically:

“It feels amazing! Even in the Seven Hells I didn’t have this much power at my disposal! Oh, the things I could do with it…”

Meepo, on the other hand, was busy poofing all over the place, appearing under trees and behind rocks, and Invoker was sporting a rather creepy smile as he magicked out of thin air a small book and started whispering under his breath:

“Ohhh, I’ve never tried this one, never had the mana…. Skywrath’s Mystic Flare…”
Crixalis scuttled between them and raised his harsh and dry voice almost to a yell, and his peremptory shout seemed to silence the hyper-active spell casters:

“Enough! This is not the time to play! We have a duty, we are bound to come back to the Earth plane and fight for the Dire!”

Akasha eyed him sharply, clearly not happy having someone tell her what to do and answered with a scoff:

“Please! I can do whatever I want now, I’m an all powerful bitch! Why should-“

“We have a Contract to fulfill” Came the deep voice of Chaos Knight, echoing from inside the helm, as he walked forward and positioned himself at the side of the Sand King. At the mention of the Contract, the Queen of Pain opened her mouth, furious, but remained silent and ultimately her eyes fell to the ground, filled with shame and anger. Invoker coughed sheepishly and put the book in his left sleeve and Meepo finally settled down on the grass and kicked a small pebble sadly.

“Every hero signs a Contract with the Dire when they join the fight.” Continued Chaos Knight, his voice never changing and keeping that monotonous, otherworldly feel to it, as he marched through them and finally stopped at the edge of the clearing. He looked at the forest that sprawled in front of him for a while, before saying:

“You are all familiar with your personal fate if you decide to desert. Demoness, Sorcerer, you are both right, as this realm is unlike anything I’ve seen before. I know not of a way to go back to the Earth plane.” Akasha smirked at Sand King, hoping Nessaj would back her up on her idea to go all out and forget about the fight, but her triumphant smile turned into a frown as he continued: “But… If we are cut off from the Dire, then it can’t communicate with us, either. How long before it will assume we just ran away?”

“You may be right, Chaos Knight, but the Dire in person told us heroes have been disappearing. It will likely think we suffered the same fate…” Said Invoker, his hands still trembling from the excitement of having an unlimited supply of mana to fuel his experiments.

“Maybe. But we have a demon, a famous mage and a plane traveler in this group, three proficient at going through dimensions. Maybe the Dire won’t seal us off right away, but as the days pass and we don’t come back, eventually it will think it’s better to just make sure we have not actually defected for the Radiant. It will activate the Terminal Clause. We need to go back to the Earth plane before our usefulness stop outweighing the possibility of us being a liability. Without Armageddon, I can’t travel through the planes. Demoness, Sorcerer, do you think you can bring us back?” He said as he turned around to face them. Akasha sighed and shook her head:

“Nope. It’s true that I can appear everywhere, but I have to be summoned first.” Everyone turned immediately to the Invoker, who gulped nervously and said:

“Right now, no. But with the right thaumaturgic instruments and a magic lab, I could do it… in a month, maybe less. So we need to find a settlement.”

“When I teleported in the air, I saw a small town in the distance, just outside the forest. Maybe we can torture them to give us what we need, then we can butcher them and hav-“said Akasha, her voice suddenly getting heavier and heavier, her eyes shining with barely contained lust.

“We have no idea what inhabits this dimension.” Said Sand King harshly “We can’t afford to antagonize the locals. No torture, no maiming, and no flirting.”

“The Sand King is right, demoness. We aren’t going to murder anyone who crosses our path to satisfy your deviant lust” Interjected Nessaj. He firmly grasped his axe, clearly annoyed by all this chatter, but the Queen of Pain answered to him nonetheless.

“Oh come on, you are the embodiment of chaos! How can you not enjoy a few slow, protracted murders here and there?” She rebuked, and poked the Knight with a small knife, enjoying the sound of metal against metal. In a blur, he shot his left hand forward, grabbed the knife and crushed it in his palm, before throwing it on the ground. She flinched and teleported back a bit.

“Your petty games and the lives of mortals are not my concern, one way or the other. Whether they live or die, it is of no importance to me. But completing my mission is important, and anything that could slow me down will disappear. Am I clear, demoness?” He looked at her through the slit in his helm, and a few slithers of flame got through it. Akasha watched him intensely for a couple of seconds, then sighed, and said wearily.

“Ok, ok, no killing and torture. Ugh, let’s just get back to the Earth plane; at least there I can have some fun. The town was that way” She pointed at thick of the forest.

They all walked forward into the dangerous forest, with Chaos Knight chopping down trees to pass through, Akasha flirting with Invoker, who tried his best to ignore her, and Meepo and Sand King closing the line, the latter informing the small rodent on which species of scorpions were possible to eat. For others, it may have looked like an ominous sight, a parade of monsters and outcast marching through a place of dread and danger. For them, it was a Tuesday.

---

The forest seemed endless, thick, and bent on slowing them down as much as possible. Even if the thickest trees only managed to squeeze an annoyed grunt from Nessaj, the necessity of mauling down every bit of vegetation that stood in their path had made what could have been a small trek into a hours long forced walk of which the end looked ever the more distant the more time passed. What made it even more unnerving was the realization they more moving slowly. Really slowly. Akasha’s periodic teleportation’s in the air told them the small town wasn’t getting any nearer. It just hung in the distance, a mirage of hope for a way to come back home or just something that could alleviate the boredom of the situation. It wasn’t before long that Invoker decided that he, an immortal magical genius, wasn’t lowly enough to just walk into a muddy forest, and shouted angrily:

“Enough! It’s not possible that after six hours of walking we’re not getting closer! I say we are running in circles. We are LOST” He made sure to dramatically emphasize the last word, and Akasha even added a whispered “Dun dun duuun”.

“What, we? Lost? Puh-lease, mister magic man! You can’t get lost with deeez babies over here!” Said Meepo, and waved proudly at his long, pointy ears.

“I am not a magic man, I’m a sorcerer, you insolent rodent! And how ears will even be able to help us find a city?” Shouted Karl in frustration.

“Eheheeheh, you’re not familiar with wilderness, are you, mister magic man? A city, even a small village, compared to a forest like this one, makes a lot of noise. While you can’t hear it, I most certainly can!” He said while puffing his chest with pride.

“So? What do you hear?” Asked the Invoker with impatience.

“Nothing! This place is as silent as a grave!” Answered candidly Meepo with a smile.

A sadistic smirk crept on Karl’s face as he neared the innocent creature, his hands covered with fire and his eyes reduced to pinpricks. Meepo stood petrified, unsure what to do, whether to run into the forest or stay there and take the blunt of the Invoker’s rage:

“Oh, I’m going to enjoy turning you into as-“

“Stop! I do hear something!” Said Sand King, as he stepped between them. Akasha nodded and added “Yeah, I hear something too! I couldn’t mistake that sound anywhere! Screams of pain, uhuhuhuh” She shuddered with pleasure and licked her lips. As the others mentioned it, both Meepo and Invoker started hearing an unmistakable shriek of pain, yet it didn’t seem to come from a wounded animal, but something capable of speech. Nessaj grabbed Invoker by the shoulders, turned him around to face him with his feet a couple of inches off the ground and said, as serious as can be:

“You will not roast Meepo, Sorcerer. We need him. Alive.” As Invoker opened his mouth to complain, the Chaos Knight stopped him before he could say another word: “Uninjured.” He let him out of his grasp, and the magician fell back on the grass. He massaged his shoulder and mumbled angrily.

However, Nessaj didn’t pay much attention to him and turned around to ask Meepo if he could pinpoint the location of the scream, to which the scavenger nodded enthusiastically.

“Then, show us. Bring us to this creature, maybe it will know the way out of this forest”

Meepo sniffed the air a few times, turned his head around frantically for a couple of seconds, and then stopped abruptly as the screams appeared to come to an end. He suddenly started running into the forest as the others followed. He moved with agility through the bushes and trees, dodging expertly the big branches and using his shovel to clear out a small path for his team mates to follow him. As they ran through the forest, they all wondered what strange creature would inhabit such a magic filled world: probably things of great power and wisdom, and so they braced themselves to face a proud, wounded creature that would not yield to them. It was to their great surprise that the forest suddenly ended around them, as they stumbled across a simple, trodden path. It stretched for miles, and it was large enough for them to pass through without any hindrance. At one side, its back resting against a tree and yelping in pain was a small cyan pegasus with a rainbow mane. They weren’t alien to flying horses, as they had one that was used as a courier, but this one had a much flashier color scheme, and big, expressive eyes that looked very much like that of a human. It was also a fair bit smaller than a normal horse, standing just above Meepo in height. The pegasus was clutching its left wing in pain, and there was blood trickling down from it. The creature was so absorbed in its pain, its eyes shut and puffy with tears, that it seemingly didn’t notice the strange bunch in front of her until Meepo talked:

“Oh, it’s just a pegasus! A flashy pegasus, but still… Oh well, we can still put out of its misery and eat it. I’m starving!”

As soon as it heard the rodent talk, the pegasus’ eyes shot wide open and looked at the group standing in the middle of the path with panicked, nervous gazes that traveled between each of the Dire Heroes. As she saw Meepo walking towards her, the shovel firmly grasped in his paws and ready to strike, she waved a hoof desperately in front of her and blurted out:

“W-w-wait, what’s the problem with you guys? You can’t e-e-eat me!”

Meepo stopped and tilted his head to the right, looked at her intensively and then stated, like it had been obvious from the start:

“You can talk.”

“Of c-course I can talk! But if you want a piece of the Dash, you’ll have to earn it the hard wa- ouch ouch” She answered angrily, and tried to get up, only to fall back down as her left wing started bleeding more intensely. Meepo waved a paw dismissively at her and said with a smile:

“Come on, we would never eat something that talks, am I right guys? Uh, uh?” He looked back to his comrades and gestured them to come closer. Nessaj stood still, unwavering and never moving his gaze from the small talking horse, while Akasha was sporting the creepiest smile she could muster. Invoker, on the other hand, was looking curiously at the creature’s wings, as if they were a work of marvel. Sand King quickly scuttled forward to the scavenger’s side. The pegasus recoiled as she saw the monstrous insect coming towards her, but quickly seemed to calm down a bit when she heard what words Crixalis had to say.

“I’m sorry for my comrade’s behavior, we’re just quite away from home, lost, tired, and from where we come, horses don’t quite… talk. Allow me to introduce myself and my team mates: I am Crixalis, the Sand King. This is Meepo, the Geomancer. The woman with the horns over there is Akasha, the Queen of Pain. Behind her, Nessaj, the Chaos Knight” her ears moved a bit when she heard the word ‘chaos’ “and Karl, the Invoker. What is your name?”

The pegasus mare eyed them with suspicion for a while, sometimes breaking the silence with a yelp of pain. Ultimately, she sighed with resignation and answered the Sand King:

“It’s… Dash. Rainbow Dash. I kinda injured my wing while doing a sick stunt, and now I’m stuck here in the Everfree Forest.”
Nessaj stepped forward, pointed at the mare with his axe and ordered Invoker:

“Sorcerer, cure her.”

The mage grumbled and muttered complaints under his breath, but nonetheless walked up to Rainbow Dash and knelt down beside her. The mare still seemed wary of them, but the Invoker didn’t care, and told her with a scowl:

“Stay still.”

His hand, a globe of blue, soothing light, soon engulfed the injured wing like a cloak. Rainbow Dash could feel the wound close up, and in a matter of seconds, Karl retracted the hand, and backed off. Her left wing felt in top shape, and she flapped it a bit to try it out. A small smile crept on her face and muttered a “thanks” to her healer. Crixalis thought it was the right time to ask her about the town, now that they had shown a bit of kindness, but he was pushed aside as Akasha stepped forward, a small dagger in her hand and a horrific smile on her face.

“See? She won’t talk it’s torture time I take the wings-“She said as she lunged forward, lust dripping from her voice. An armor clad hand shot out and grabbed her left arm. Akasha stopped abruptly and shook her head, like she just had just come out of a trance. She teleported back, and said sheepishly:

“Right, no torture.”

Nessaj stared at her for a moment, before turning back to the Rainbow Dash. He walked forward and asked to the mare:

“We are not from this dimension. We need to get to the town near this forest, and we need a magician’s lab to go back to our own. Take us there”

As usual, his dreary and deep voice asked for obedience, and Rainbow Dash seemed to comply with his request:

“Ehm, sure. I guess I can take you to Ponyville” Akasha flinched slightly when she heard that name” and talk to my friend Twilight. She’s one of those magic eggheads; she knows everything about it and has this nerdy lab under her home. I kinda owe you for fixing my wing.”

The Chaos Knight offered a hand which Rainbow Dash hesitantly took. She shook the dust from her mane, and Nessaj gestured her to lead the way. She flapped her wings and started hovering a couple of meters off the ground. She looked back one last time and started moving forward. After a couple of minutes of march down the path, she gulped and found the courage to ask:

“Another dimension? So you guys are like aliens, or something? Because that would be totally cool”

Comments

[LE_MALEM]

So, this is the Dire side of the story? Mouhahaha cool! I mean by 'dire side' that you're the 2nd Dota2 crossover writer in here! Please do continue!

EDIT: Oh that reminds me, when is the next chapter????

[Daequo]

Its got a good premise so far and I'm always open to more dota crossovers but I think you should get a prereader as just reading through it I noticed various spelling and grammar mistakes that even a decent prereader would catch.

[Lobisomen616]

This. Is. Perfect.

[Xeravon]

How... intriguing. Nyx Nyx Nyx, hehe