“I do not approve of that concoction.”

Kain looked through an undead’s eyes at the undead Russian who had just opened a magitech radio line to him. He wasn’t expecting that the first words out of Piotr’s mouth in such a long period of time would be his condemnation of the use of Agent Orange.

“And what exactly do you not approve of?” Kain asked. He had made up his mind already, knowing what kind of horrors that Agent Orange was capable of. He had not expected it to have been so terrifyingly effective against the tree-men, though. That was not to say that such a horror story was not something that he was interested in, though. In fact, the painful demise of the plantoids only gave him more of a reason to use the stuff, despite how terrible he knew it to be.

“That… chemical… is not something any being should have to deal with. I have seen what happens to the living and undead alike when they come into contact with it. Even minor exposure is a potential death sentence if not dealt with in a swift and precise manner. There is no moral high ground in using it, and all it does is show that you are just as malign as your detractors think you to be.”

“You are being… uncharacteristically verbose, Piotr.”

A short grunt was the response that Kain received. Obviously, Piotr was very upset with the usage of Agent Orange so far as well as its effects. Then again he did have a valid reason to be. He had never been a very personable person even before he was cursed/ blessed to constantly generate a sub-arctic blizzard around himself at nearly all times. In fact, he was essentially the kind of person/ sentient undead who would be overjoyed to simply be left alone and not have to talk to or interact with anyone.

Despite that, he was an animal lover and did have some compassion for those who he felt that he needed to protect. Despite technically being unnaturally created, Piotr had a deep affection for the flying creatures at Darksol’s disposal, which were the Tier 1 Fel Bats and the Tier 2 Hell Bats. And that was to say nothing of how he viewed the Dre Wolves and their 2nd Tier counterparts, the Death Hounds. Some of them may have had minor (or major) rotting flesh and exposed musculature or bone, but he still seemed to love them all the same.

Once he found out that Kain was using them (the Fel Bats) as kamikaze bombers to transport canisters of Agent Orange into the Elven lands, however, he nearly flew into a rage. Of course, you likely would not have been able to distinguish his ‘angry’ behavior from his ‘calm’ behavior, not only because he was missing half of his face but also because he just was not an expressive person. That did not mean that he did not feel genuine anger that so many poor bloodthirsty monster bats were being used as glorified semi-guided missiles, though.

Kain sighed and thought things over again. He had been getting quite a lot of these kinds of calls and letters, and not just from the higher-ups in Darksol’s leadership structure. He was now getting complaints from people much lower down the ladder as well, including people who, for one reason or another, thought that it was a good idea to steal sensitive military chemicals from storage and processing facilities, expose themselves to said chemicals, and then openly call out the government for making the chemicals that they exposed themselves to.

Such people were dealt with appropriately, of course, but it didn’t stop people from finding out the true horror of what that compound could do. Unlike the US government and military, which had quietly swept their own issues regarding exposure to Agent Orange under the rug for over a decade, Darksol had the lid blown off in under two months after the chemical’s first use. Due to all of this, Kain was receiving some pretty bad press. It wasn’t like that couldn’t be ‘dealt with’, but he had promised that the levels of press censorship would be ‘minimal’.

Grumbling in annoyance, Kain finally snapped under the pressure. His people wanted him to not use an inhumane compound like Agent Orange on those that sought the eradication of all they held dear? Fine, he would no longer use it. He would, however, use something else, then.

And if they didn’t like him using a hellish mixture of Napalm, White Phosphorus, and Thermite? Well, then they could just go down there and try and clear all that annoying and dangerous foliage by hand! Either way, it would shut a bunch of people up, though perhaps the latter option would be a more… permanent solution to the problem than simply using that nasty incendiary mix.

After all, he had seen entire armies of cheap chaff undead be sent to clear the jungles manually, only to quite literally be ripped apart and used as food/ fertilizer by the native vegetation and animal life. Maybe if he sent a few formations made up of people who kept griping about his usage of incendiaries and chemicals being too inhumane to clear that shit themselves then he would have fewer people back at home begging for those things to not be used.

He caught himself there, though. His mind had begun to wander down a dark path, and he found it going to those places more often than he’d have liked. Maybe using Agent Orange was too much, after all. He would, however, draw the line at not using incendiaries and other compounds. After all, Wakanda and Alistaira had just finished making a chemical cocktail that would temporarily turn a portion of land hit with enough of it into a mini Gallows Woods, complete with all the nightmarish crap that came with it.

Ah, those were the days. Back before Necrograd had become the supersized metropolis it was now, complete with suburbs that had almost fully erased those cursed woodlands from existence. That line of thought led him down a nice little memory lane…

“My Lord… You will stop using that chemical, da?”

“Oh, yes… Yeah, I’ll… I’ll find something else. Actually, I hear that the newest addition to our chemical weapons systems has been finished, so we’ll start testing it in this current war. I will, however, still need to use the Fel Bats in such a way. We both know that the enemy anti-air and air force are exceedingly nasty, and aerial bombing using chaff is a more cost-effective method than risking other, more valuable things, correct?”

Piotr didn’t say anything, but Kain could tell that he wasn’t happy about Kain’s insistence on using ‘poor, defenseless animals’ as semi-guided missiles.

“At least this would be preferable to using Agent Orange, then? If the compound that will be used instead does work out properly, then maybe we’ll have a decent menagerie of new, fluffy allies for you to fawn over. That is the real reason why you hate Agent Orange so much, after all. Perhaps you wish to have some more animal companions so that you don’t have to talk to people nearly as much? Did any of those hit the nail on the head?”

Piotr was silent for a while before growling a bit and replying with a single word.

“…Da.”