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“It’s just like I said! We’re going to take Dalaran for all that it’s got! It’s a genius plan, it’s simple, it SHOULD have been obvious… and absolutely nothing will go wrong.”
“So, genius. How do we land?”
The answer, as it turns out, is ‘Painfully, and embedded halfway into the ground of the gardens that encircle the Antonidas Memorial, legs kicking uselessly in the air’. Arch-Villain Rafaam was pondering how to proceed when he was violently yanked out, and landed unceremoniously on his ass, his head spinning. He hit his hand against his head once, twice, and his vision focuses on Hagatha, who is already moving on to free the next of their number.
“See?” he says, getting to his feet and dusting himself off. “We landed. Simple.”
“Genius,” Hagatha says, grabbing Togwaggle’s ankle and yanking hard. The Kobold audibly pops free, and swings in an arc over Hagatha’s head, slamming into the ground behind her.
Looking around, Rafaam sees that the others - Madame Lazul and Blastmaster Boom - are already free, and looking around the small memorial. “Alright!” he says, rubbing his hands together. “Now, we just need to stick to my obvious, simple plan!” He turns to Togwaggle. “I know you want to raid the vault, but first I need you to-”
“VAULT!” Togwaggle cries out, then runs off, careening around corners. “SHINIEEES” can be heard dopplering off.
“...rrrriiiiight,” Rafaam finishes. “Okay. The plan. Lazul, go sow chaos in the streets.” Lazul nods sharply, then leaves in the same direction Togwaggle left in. “Boom, get those rockets strapped to Dalaran.”
Boom gives Rafaam a grin from behind his helm. “You got it boss! I’m gonna give her the rockets! Rockets for days!” He throws a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll have to go through the sewers to get to the undercarriage to mount these babies.”
“Fine,” Rafaam says as Boom heads off. “I’ll come help later.” He turns to Hagatha, who is giving him a withering look. “Rip open Violet Hold. Unleash the prisoners on the city.” Hagatha quickly throws him a wicked grin. “We’ll break the will of Dalaran, then loot her treasures!” she cries, then heads off to do her work.
Rafaam grins to himself. No-one thought to ask him what he’s going to be doing. Fools.
Swampqueen Hagatha makes her way quickly through the streets of Dalaran, moving from shadow to shadow until she reaches the bridge approach to the doors of the Violet Hold. It’s the work of a few moments to have a pair of air elementals take the on-duty guards out of commission, and to dunk them in the moat for good measure. She lets herself have a good cackle before she skulks down the entry corridor.
The vault itself proves empty, but for the inmates and the sound of the force fields that pen them in. “Fools!” Hagatha finds herself crowing. “You left your prison undefended!” She moves to the leftmost cell, and begins unravelling the spellwork holding them in place, blithely ignoring the levers next to each cell labelled “RELEASE” in Common. “Soon you will find yourself drowning in a tide of your own prisoners! Ahahahaha!”
She was letting Mindflayer Kaahrj free from his cell, when a flash of light sweeps the room, and a voice cries out from the entrance hallway. “What’s all this noise?” booms the voice of a guard.
“Ahahah- Ahhh!” Hagatha cries out in shock, jumping forward a step in surprise, into Kaahrj’s cell. Spinning around, she sees the guard reach for one of those ignored levers, this one labelled ‘LOCKDOWN’. “No!” she screams, calling for lightning - but too late, as it impacts the rising force field of the cell, and sizzles away.
Hagatha beats her fists against the field of the cell. “GENIUSSSSS!” she screams at no one in particular, then turns her attention to the guard, who is carefully approaching Kaahrg’s - her - cell.
“I will not be contained!” she snarls at him, a promise of violence.
“You said it,” a muffled voice burbles from the neighbouring cell.
Blastmaster Boom races around the brickwork corner, not even looking as he tosses a pair of bombs behind him. Gasping for breath, he waits for the shockwave of the explosion before he doubles back, heading deeper into the sewers.
The obvious mount points for these rockets is the bottom of Dalaran - from an engineering standpoint. They can’t loot Dalaran if it falls apart before they get away!
After doesn’t matter as much. He didn’t expect so many damned rogues to be infesting the sewers, though.
“I bet it was obvious,” he says to himself, in a voice imitating Rafaam’s. Striding across the chamber, he reaches another stairwell, and tosses some mechanical contraptions down the steps. They roll to the next platform, then unfold spider legs, and scurry further down. A few seconds pass, and Boom hears his namesake sounding off below in duplicate. Nodding smugly to himself, Boom heads down, and finally reaches the external access platforms.
Boom takes off his backpack, and tips it upside down. A pile of cubes fall out, and tumble to the ground. “Time is money,” he says, taking one of the Rockets-in-a-box in his hands and getting to work.
Madame Lazul has been wandering the city streets for a few minutes, and her plan to sow chaos in the streets has hit its first obstacle - the streets are unusually empty.
“Where are dey?” she says to herself, on her second lap of the city. Lights in the buildings are on, but the lower levels are empty, and the upper levels betray no shadows of movement within.
She wanders down into the Sunreaver Sanctuary district, surrounded by the crowd of spirits she has been summoning as she patrols, and suddenly comes to a halt, so suddenly that the monstrous spirit behind her almost runs her over. The inn ahead, she notices, has sound as well as light. They must be having a party or something, she thinks to herself derisively. Turning to her gathered army, she gestures them forward, and they charge in through the doorway.
Well. They try to charge in through the doorway. It takes a few moments for them to figure out a sort of dual-file entry process. “Once I get in dere,” Lazul shouts, “You’ll know true fear!”
The lack of response is disconcerting. It takes another minute before her spirit army shuffles in, and she can finally follow and see for herself what’s inside.
“What… is… dis?” she asks, bewildered. Certainly there’s a lot of people in here, eating and dancing and talking - but why aren’t they paying any attention to her and her spirits? Why aren’t they running in fear? She compels her forces to flail and menace, but the people of Dalaran remain implacable, until one of her spirits accidentally tips a food table, sending stew and pie flying at the next table - and those sitting at it.
“Ah, dere it is! Now you will be-” Lazul begins, but it’s too late. She has the chaos she wanted, just not how she thought she would, as the food fight begins in earnest.
A table of guards flings steaks at her ghosts, and her spirit tentacles are surrounded by jello, rendered immobile. In the back, charred chickens are lobbed at her geists, and somehow explodes them? What?
What looks to be some kind of high-ranking mage stands up and points at the source. “Nomi!” he bellows. “No explosives!” Lazul looks on in stunned confusion. “It… shouldn’t be like dis,” she mutters in disbelief. The flow of explosive poultry does not stop - if anything, it increases. Lazul turns and runs for the door.
Arch Villain Rafaam makes his way into the depths of the central spire of Dalaran. It only takes a couple of minutes for him to figure out the transporter pad, and he silently congratulates himself on figuring out the contraption. It’s so obvious!
Carefully he makes his way along the corridor, hidden below Dalaran’s surface, until he reaches the chamber at its end. He cackles to himself. Let Togwaggle think the ‘shinies’ are the real treasure. Let Boom think that stealing an entire city was the real prize. He’d heard news, through reputable sources, that Dalaran held real, actual power deep within its heart.
He looks at the walls, at the plinths that circled the room. At their contents - the Pillars of Creation. He doesn’t know their actual names, but as he pulls out a cloth sack and shoves them in, he names them all with the same name - ‘Mine’.
He wasn’t sure how to use them, but by the Titans, he was going to find a way!
Immensely satisfied with his plan’s success, he turns to leave and join Boom, if he hadn’t screwed his end up too badly already.
“You’ll stay right here,” the guard told Hagatha. He seems to delight in saying it, she fumes to herself. It was all he ever said.
“Let me out of here or I will see you rent limb from bleeding limb! ” she snarls at him.
“You’ll stay right here,” he repeats, as she notices movement at the Hold entrance.
“I won’t,” she promises him. Stall, stall. “I’ll be free, and I will have my vengeance on you and your paltry kind!”
“You’ll stay right hurk!” he tries to repeat, collapsing to the ground. Lazul stands behind her, grinning.
“Having fun in dere?” she asks Hagatha, giving her a wave.
“Get me out of here!” Hagatha snarls. “I don’t know if he had a key or-” she trails off, as Lazul reaches for the nearby lever and pulls, opening the cell.
Hagatha steps gingerly out of the cell, and gives the lever and Lazul a suspicious look. “How did you do that?” she demands.
“De spirits keep deyre secrets,” Lazul replies. “Let’s catch up wit’ de others. Someting’s wrong here in Dalaran.”
Rafaam finds Boom unfolding the last Rocket-in-a-box beneath Dalaran.
“All done down here?” he asks the goblin.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Boom snarks back as he hits the rocket with an oversized hammer. “Just gotta finish up here… aaand…. She’s good to go!”
“Brilliant,” Rafaam says with a satisfied sigh. “Let’s get to the landing.”
Rafaam and Boom reach Krasus’ Landing just after Hagatha and Lazul.
“Anyone seen Togwaggle?” Hagatha asks.
“Who cares about Togwaggle?” Rafaam replies. “If he wants shinies, he can have them, the useless twit.”
Togwaggle, as it happens, is swimming in the mountain of gold coins that comprise Dalaran’s vault, Scrooge McDuck style, and would happily die like this if it came to it.
“What happened to sowing chaos and unleashing prisoners?” Rafaam asks. “I didn’t see anything of the sort on the way here.”
Hagatha stares him down, and Lazul snorts. “Someting’s not right in the city of Dalaran,” she says.
“Don’t worry about it,” Boom says. “We’re about to take the whole thing!”
“Fire it up,” Rafaam says.
“I did,” Boom replies. “Two minutes ago.”
They all look out at the horizon, then back at Boom.
“It doesn’t look like it’s moving,” Hagatha says menacingly.
“You gotta wait until second gear kicks in”, Boom says, raising his hands placatingly.
Lazul glances over to Rafaam. “What were you doing during all this, anyway?”
Rafaam pats the cloth sack at his belt. “Isn’t it obvious?” He lifts the flap, letting her see the contents.
Lazul looks in, then looks up at him, confused. “What? What? The Pi..” She cuts off, speaks quieter, more urgent. “Dey’re not here.”
Rafaam frowns. “What do you mean, not here?”
“Dey’re not here! Dey were expended, used up draining Sargeras’ sword! Idiot!”
Rafaam glares at her. “Then what do you call this?” He pulls the hammer half out of the sack.
“Here it comes!” Boom cries out, interrupting.
Elsewhere in the sky, in a place that looks exactly like Krasus’ Landing, Jaina and Khadgar watch Dalaran floating majestically, now encumbered with an egregiously extravagant rocket assembly.
“They have to be the worst thieves I’ve ever heard of,” Khadgar observes.
“But you have heard of them,” Jaina replies.
Khadgar snorts in amusement. “How long will the Mirror Image Dalaran hold up, anyway?”
Jaina shrugs. “I’m not exactly certain. I haven’t used this spellwork before. Until they get too far away, I expect.” She sniffs. “At the rate those rockets are firing, I imagine it’ll take-”
Unexpectedly, the rockets hit second gear. Dalaran suddenly streaks across the sky, then fizzles and disappears.
“- until right now,” Jaina adds with surprise, as Khadgar lets go of the cloaking field hiding the real Dalaran from external view.
As Krasus’ Landing - and the rest of Dalaran - suddenly flicker out of existence, the rocket assembly sprints out from under them, corkscrewing up into the stratosphere.
The League of E.V.I.L. collectively scream, and then plummet.
It takes a minute for them to arrange themselves, much like on their approach to Dalaran in the first place, dropping headfirst through the sky - mostly due to a lack of any better idea about how to fall.
“What was dat?”
“I thought absolutely nothing would go wrong?”
“My rockets! My sweet, beautiful babies!”
“It’s fine, it all went to plan, obviously! So long as I have…”
“... it’s empty, isn’t it?”
“It’s empty! Argh!”
“I told you dey weren’t dere!”
They plummet in silence for a few heartbeats.
“So, genius,” Hagatha asks. “How do we land?”