by Milton Garby
"Indeed." Talgath made a gesture with his right hand and the container floated into it. Meanwhile he raised his left hand, cloaked in demonic magic, and began his work. "We'll make a pit stop here to assess our strength. Duskwood and its city Darkshire lay just ahead, and we will be going through a choke point." Purple runes burnt themselves onto the ground, forming a vast circle around Talgath with him at its center. "While the gan'arg prepare for the Master's arrival, we will have time to spare. I intend to use this time to investigate this mortal." The symbols looped around and around, and even floated up into the air in lazy, everflowing spirals. "Stand back."
Still sustaining his magic, Talgath walked out of his own circle and willed the container into the analysis spiral. Shadow magic, straight from the Twisting Nether, surrounded the box and began poking at the foul power locked inside. The container shuddered in anguish, but the scraps of Old God power remained otherwise inert. Then the runes lit up brightly, and spherical projections began to appear in the air above it.
He frowned, and made some exclusion clauses in the ritual he hadn't thought to beforehand. The ritual was designed to show anyone who commanded this magic within a small margin for error. With the massive influx of leylines from nearby Karazhan, making it a worldwide sweep was simple as well, but that had another problem. He did not care about the various faceless locked beneath the earth, or the body of Yogg-Saron, or about some high elf cult leader. All he cared about was a human girl.
Most of the orbs simply vanished after he made the adjustment, leaving no more projections than he could count on one hand. Each of the women were busy doing something. Trekking across the land, sleeping, worshiping. "Domana. Which of these was the one who controlled you?"
She strode forward with an alluring sway in her step and licked the fingers of her left hand. "Hmm... that one, my Lord," she insinuated, pointing to a hologram near the right.
He looked towards it. The human in the projection was wearing dark green robes and wielded a metallic staff. Other mortals shifted in and out of view. Her face was angular, as though she were perpetually frowning, but everything else seemed to fit. "Her is it?" He willed the other projections to vanish and, after long minutes of casting later, summoned a final hologram, of Azeroth itself. The fragile marble spun in the middle of his scrying circle, and then the mortal girl's projection extended a line to one spot of land on it.
"Hillsbrad Foothills I see," he murmured, stroking his chin. "Interesting."
"Oooh," the succubus cooed. "Are you going to kill her? Can I have her first?" The demoness's expression darkened sharply, all business and no pleasure. "I still need to repay her for the fun we had last time," Domana scowled.
"Not ideally," he said, examining the little spot. "Fighting us or not, she wields the power of the Old Gods. Mortals do not just 'happen' across such power. They pursue it. They find it. It finds them, and they accept it, knowing full well what it does and what it encourages. I am certain that with just a little push, we can easily get her to see things our way."
"Fascinating," Lorthiras said, sounding as though he thought this the polar opposite of fascinating. "So you're going to recruit her."
"No." He turned to the succubus. "You are."
She stepped back and blinked quickly, a hand on her bare midriff. "Me?"
"Yes." He turned back to the hologram of Azeroth. "You're going to make her an offer she can't refuse."
Sara
Hillsbrad Foothills was extremely different from what she remembered.
Sara had been born in a small village, far from Southshore. When she was a baby the forsaken had started advancing on the area, but the small size of her town let them escape detection long enough to evacuate to Elwynn. She had few memories of Hillsbrad, but she did have them. Chilly autumn mornings, pastoral hills and fresh pine trees. Sea-touched air and fertile soil. Now however, with the forsaken having long ago sacked the area and taken control, the air was pallid and the grass was withered and dying. The trees grew branches at odd angles and a strange, slimy smell filled the air.
A big improvement, in her opinion.
That, of course, had been hours ago. After arriving in Southpoint Gate, Darnall led them through some checks in the former forsaken camp. Most of the undead were fighting in and around the Undercity, so the Alliance had, in their infinite kindness and generosity, reinforced Southpoint Gate as a base to launch attacks against the tide of demons sliding south.
The gate itself wasn't truly a gate. It was two towers with a road going in between, leading to Silverpine Forest. Tents and structures were covered in purple cloth, emblazoned with the rotting face that was the symbol of Sylvanas's people. But Southpoint and all its rotting, undead denizens were behind her now, and instead she was hiking through the mountains with the other four.
Darnall, the night elf, took point. The hills were covered in defiled trees, making it easy to stay relatively undetected, not that there were any demons nearby. They slunk from shadow to shadow, watching for any surprise attacks. Sara was protected firmly behind her dark shell, but the others... eh, she'd resurrect them.
She had no idea how close they were to their position. All Sara knew was that they hiked for three days, running fast with the draenei hunter around, sleeping on compact bedrolls and eating small, nutrition-packed meals. Her physical condition wasn't as good as theirs, but it was good enough now that she could keep up. And keep up she did for three days, until Darnall held his hand up in a signal for them to stop.
"We're here," he whispered. "I'll go scout in a moment. First, buff up. I'll go first." The night elf knelt and placed both his palms on the open soil. His eyes closed, and Sara eyed him in confusion. What was he... ?
Then he stood up and thrust his left hand into the air. A magical, orange pawprint flashed above him and the others, and presumably her own hea - oh wow he's definitely a druid, she thought suddenly as the nature magic brought her to her knees, dry heaving.
"Are you alright?" he asked.
It took Sara a moment to get control of her stomach, but she waved his concern off. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Nature magic just feels weird to me." And now that the initial nauseating shock was gone, she did feel much better than before. The dull ache in her legs was gone, her head was clear, it was the sensation of having the flu and then all at once not having the flu.
"Good," he said. "Sproz, you're up."
The priest? Oh no. Sara braced herself as the gnome brought her hands together and whispered a prayer for safety and fortitude. A blazing white light formed around the short woman's feet and shone upwards, accompanied by a circular blue symbol above her head. Then the Light ever so briefly engulfed Sara.
Where the nature spell felt like something rejecting her, something disgusting and nauseating on the most fundamental level, this was a flash of dragonfire on every inch of her skin. Her teeth ground together as the surge of heat washed over her, but as with the night elf's spell it faded quickly, and left her feeling tougher than before. Luckily the death knight seemed as pained by the Light, so nobody was paying attention to her as she stiffened under the pain.
"I have some spells too," she offered. "I need to do it one at a time, but it's very long lasting." More or less permanent, even. She approached Darnall and reached her powers into his mind. The process wasn't too complex, and she'd done it hundreds of times in Nethergarde. A little tweak there, deleting some obscure lines there, so on. Soon, she had successfully increased his reflexes and pain tolerance. Sara repeated the same for the others. Even the death knight wasn't too difficult. The necromatic magic around his thought lines seemed to buzz against her heart, but his actual mind was just as malleable as any other.
"Alright," Sara said after her work was done. "Should be quicker and tougher now. So, what's the plan?"
Darnall pointed in a direction. After some glancing at the sun, she realized it was due east. "Forge Camp: Malice is right that way. However, before we head in spells blazing, we're going to do some scout
ing. Like this." Then a flash of green plasma, filled with verdant leaves, burst around the druid's hand. Heavy white smoke enshrouded his form. The space around him collapsed, and when the fog cleared the night elf was gone. In his place was a giant wildcat, with twilight-blue fur and silver moon marking around its face. It wielded claws as sharp as nails and sabreteeth like daggers. The feline shook its head and looked towards Sproz, who it was eye level with. "Sproz, mind vision me. I'll get you as close to the camp as I can."
"Got it," the priest said, her hands flashing with shadow magic. She closed her eyes, swaying in a trance, and then the cat that was Darnall lowered himself into the brush and stalked off, out of sight.
Mind vision. Sara had heard of that spell. She didn't know it, but she had developed something similar. It was more range dependent, but it worked by creating a link into a target's mind that she could activate whenever she wanted, regardless of whether she saw them. She couldn't learn the mind vision spell now though, learning new spells just by looking at them took days. And Sara had spent the time hiking developing a different spell.
After some time, Darnall returned in his cat form, but Sproz was still busy channeling her spell. Her eyes twitched under their lids like she was fast asleep. After roughly an hour more of this, the magic around her hands faded, and her eyes snapped open. "Alright, let me draw." She picked up a stick as tall as her. "Can someone clear me some dirt?" Sara summoned her Old God magic and blasted a nearby patch of grass with bright violet energy. The plants withered and died in seconds under her onslaught until she stopped. "Thanks a bunch."
The gnome began drawing little lines in it. Arcs, circles, and a few dots. Before long she was done and instead used the stick to point. "Alright. We're here." she said, pointing to the inside of the arc. "The Forge Camp is this collection of circles. These three," she said, putting crosses on them. ", are the portals. The rest are basic infrastructure they use to construct their other machines. THIS one, however, is a fel reaver. It seems to be inactive. If we want to get there, it's a pretty long run along open territory. They must've expected something like this, because there are a bunch of fel cannons covering their flanks and way too many demons close to the Dalaran crater to even consider going behind them."
"Do we have any option besides running across and dodging their fire?" the draenei among them asked.
She shook her head. "None that I can see. It seems like we'll have to brave it. I can keep you up though, I've got plenty of practice with fel cannon burns."
"How are we going to disable the portals?" Sara asked. "Go for the demons getting power from the crater, or the infrastructure?"
"Too many demons. Hundreds of them, and more every minute. The aerial teams will sort them out, but we need to go smash the reinforcements."
For a moment Sara considered offering to wipe out the demons. She certainly had the power. But until she could modify her dark shield to provide complete immunity? She'd be cursed and immolated and killed. Though she, in her training, did learn some things about demons on her own time. "There'd be control panels for the portals," she explained. "Smashing them wouldn't do it, but I can mind control a demon to overload them."
"So give you enough time to enslave one. How long should that take?"
Sara considered it. She'd only done the mind-wipe thrice so far, but there were some pointers in manipulation she'd taken from her past self that could make it easier. "A few seconds. The effect will be permanent too."
Darnall blinked at her. "Permanent?"
"Well, it won't go away on its own." She shrugged. "It'd take a lot for them to reverse it, but left to its own devices? Permanent."
The druid, still in his feline form, frowned. "When we get back, I expect a full write up pertaining to all your abilities, Miss Smithers."
"Fine. At any rate if I can get a gan'arg or mo'arg, I can use them to shut off the portals. Are there any, Sproz?" she asked, letting her Old God magic shiver along her upper arms.
They spent some more time outlining the specific formations of demons Sproz had seen while scouting. There were a lot of them, and there wouldn't be a lot of time once they were spotted to get in and get out. Luckily they did have hearthstones in case of emergency, but if they couldn't destroy the portals when the aerial squadron bombed them...
Eventually they decided on a specific route to go on, and with that done Jacob took the lead, smelling like freshly spilled blood. It sent an ecstatic shiver down her spine. They followed after him, and soon they arrived at the very edge of the mountainous forest, in sight of Forge Camp: Malice.
The demon encampment was situated in the middle of a valley. On the far side was another mountain range covered in somewhat-despoiled forestry. To the right there supposedly had once been 'Sludgeguard Tower' but now there was not even scrap to prove it had once existed. There was nothing except smooth, blackened stone. In the middle of the canyon was the Forge Camp.
It looked a lot like the one she'd seen in Dragonblight. The ground was dark and dead, and twisted metal structures clung to the land like boils. From so far, she could see the buzzing forms of hundreds of demons, and by reflex she checked to make sure her shadowy barrier was intact.
Further to the left, the Forge Camp extended and made a small arc around Dalaran crater. The crater itself was a gaping wound in the world, as if a Titan had come down with a scoop and dug out a vast section of the earth. Lavender arcane magic glowed dimly inside the crater, but even from so far away she could make out demon machines arranged over the crater like birds drinking water. They were absolutely enormous: no chance they could disable those.
"Triangle formation," Darnall suggested. "Jacob and I in front. Uztun behind me, Sara behind Jacob, fan out a bit. Sproz, you're in the middle." They shuffled around until they were in position. The front of the triangle was 'blunt', being two people wide, and Jacob was on the right side so Sara was the right corner. The gnome priest settled in the middle of them to be protected. "Any soul stones?"
"No," Sara said. "But I can resurrect."
"It'll have to do. Get ready to charge and remember the plan. Three. Two. One. Go!" And they burst from the forest, running down the slope.
Sara had to thank Leira's conditioning now, because this was a run she could handle now. They jogged across the grassy plain towards the Forge Camp, breathing heavily and preparing for the barrage of fel cannons. And they got halfway there before they had to do anything, too. Maybe the demons didn't see them until that point, or maybe the fel cannons didn't have the range. All the same, Sara saw flashes of acidic green light in the field of black and braced herself.
Jacob was the first to be hit, but he raised his runeblade into the fel-fireball's path and the sword soaked up the magic like a sponge.
Darnall jumped, twisting his feline body out of the way and letting the fireball set the ground ablaze with fire that smelled like rotten eggs.
Then a fireball hit Sara.
The inferno blossomed against her shield and wrapped around it like a hug, but then washed away and left nothing but smoke.
Fwoom! Fwoom! Fwoom! More and more fel cannons blasted them, but they kept pushing forward until they reached the Forge Camp. That was when Sara got a good look at the demon army.
Imps, observers, voidwalkers, shivarra, void terrors, felhounds, and every kind of 'guard' she could think of. There was a very good mix, and the only thing that seemed to be missing were eredar, pit lords, and dread lords. And instantly they were upon them. Jacob shrouded himself in ice and raised his runeblade. From it, arcs of necrotic power struck the defiled land and ghouls raised themselves from the earth before besetting the demons. Darnall launched himself at a succubus and began mutilating her face. Uztun hefted his crossbow and launched bolts, and Sproz began frantically weaving spells to heal the wounds the others were sustaining at a massive pace.
Sara grinned. It's time!
Shadow magic burned bright green in her palms. Her bones ached with the force of the magic she c
hanneled through her body, but the staff affixed to her back relieved the strain so she wouldn't injure herself. Then a calamitous shadow nova burst forth from her.
The Stormwind Academy of Arcane Arts and Sciences taught a valuable tool for area of effect spells, the Friend-Foe Identification Addendum. It was a simple sequence that, when attached to the spell, let it discriminate in its targets. And its use was always, always encouraged. It was used in every arcane explosion, every holy nova, every seed of corruption, every rain of fire. And her every shadow nova. So when the choking flash of Old God power burst outwards from Sara, the dark energies bent around her four allies and smashed into the Legion without causing any friendly fire.
Demons naturally had high amounts of resistance to shadow magic, but no amount of tolerance would protect them from the wrath of an Old God. They fell back from the onslaught, and the weaker demons instantly blew away like dust. She thrust her hands into the air and let loose another explosion, battering down all the surrounding demons save the infernals. A third wave of shadow destroyed them as well.
"Holy shit!" Jacob shouted, pushing forward the moment the demons were cleared away. "Okay, move!" he shouted, pointing at the nearest portal.
The portals of the Burning Legion looked somewhat like hands sticking up from the ground, and the fingers cupped fel energy inside. The closest one was still quite distant though, and more demons were upon them.
Time to put it to the test, she thought, preparing the spell she'd been practicing on the hike.
The spell's premise was simple. Why bother driving the demons insane, when instead she could kill them? Kill them permanently.
Enormous amounts of death magic pooled in her left hand, and after three seconds of casting she thrust it out at an approaching felguard. The felguard's body, weapon and armor all at once burst into a purple mist and blew outwards. It left behind a shimmering green outline of the felguard, the representation of its demonic soul. Then the soul exploded into a million pieces, each of which scattered to the nether winds.