by Milton Garby
Zap!
Then it was done. The sensation of electricity coursing through her veins faded a moment later. The paper was gone. Sara let out a breath and felt her stomach. She felt warm, oddly enough. Secure. Like something had just been made right. She repeated the process with the other two glyphs, and then tried to test out the first.
First, she summoned her shadow magic. Orbs of darkness swirled around both her hands, which she moved in a figure-eight. The first of the glyphs was simply something to contain her magic, to make it more cohesive. And sure enough, it worked. Her magic left behind none of the shadowy fog that it had for years past. Not a very useful glyph sure, but it wouldn't do for demons - or some other foe of hers - to track her with the smoke she left behind.
Next, Sara wove her magic into a barrier around herself. Like always a green sphere formed around her... but this time, it was rather easy for her to see through it. The shifting, pearlescent colors were, thanks to her second glyph, invisible on the inside and would do nothing to cloud her vision.
To test the final glyph, Sara simply stuck her hand into the pot of liquid saronite.
Like it always did, the saronite was warm and almost gooey. It wrapped around her hand, pulsed to the tune of her heartbeat and soothed the stress in her head. But this time, there was something... more. It felt like the saronite was connecting with something in her. Resonating with it. It wasn't much, but Sara's breaths came just a little easier, her mana pool was just a little deeper... yes, that would do.
She pulled her hand out of the saronite and nodded. Now she just needed some saronite gear to wear. It wasn't like it could corrupt her after all.
Sitting back down, she pulled out some sheets of paper and began scrawling all over them with spells and formulae. Keeping it all in her head and trying to memorize it would get her nowhere. She was going to write down Yogg-Saron's spells and study them from there. After all, making some minor glyphs specifically tailored to her was simple. But if she wanted to do something major, if she wanted to wield the sort of prowess Yogg-Saron did in its battle against the Kingslayers, she was going to have to try harder.
Time ticked past and Sara hardly left her room. Her writing instrument scritched and scratched. Charts. Diagrams. Spell lines and circles filled her vision, and exhaustion tugged at her eyelids but who cared? Her first mission had, despite it all, ended in colossal failure. That couldn't happen again. Everyone, including herself, needed to do their part. She could -
Knock knock knock!
Sara considered shooing whoever it was away, but it might be Leira and she could finally give the warrior her glyph. "It's open!" she called.
The door creaked open and let the light from the torches outside pour in. The light streamed around a shadow and Sara turned to face the figure. Then she froze.
"Hey there cutie, mind if we talk?" asked a succubus, striding in and kicking the door closed with a hoof. She shifted her weight onto one leg, showing off her half-naked body. "Relax, I'm not here to do anything like seduce or torture or anything." Suddenly her expression went grim. "Not that I'd mind the latter," she growled. Then she beamed again. "I'm here on behalf of my superior. He wants to extend an offer to you, honey."
Sara blinked. There was a succubus. Inside the Military Ward. How? Had she used invisibility? Probably. Should she warn the rest of the guild? Yes, she should! A demoness had gotten inside here! Who knew where else she could have gone! Where else she had already gone!
Then the succubus's words registered. It wanted to make her a deal.
Instantly, she extended her left hand at the succubus. "Not interested!" Her magic roiled and burst forth in a colossal emerald blast. The succubus's glowing eyes went wide with horror, and then the death blast swallowed her whole. When it faded, she had already returned to the nether.
Sara reclined in her seat, balled her hands into fists, and rubbed her eyes with them. "I am not paid nearly enough for this," she muttered, regretting the fact that she hadn't taken the time to permanently kill the succubus. Then she left to go raise the alarm.
It wasn't hard to convince some of the older members of the guild of what had just happened. Her magic blast had been loud. So it hadn't taken long, and much to her relief she had actually met up with Leira in the process. She'd recently come back from her mission in the Arathi Highlands, and had already stored away her gear and been debriefed. At the moment, she and the taller woman were walking back to their rooms.
"So before I forget," Sara said. "I invented a new glyph that I want to give you."
"Sara, I already have all my glyphs in place," she said, amused.
"No, I mean I invented an entirely new glyph. Using my you know what powers," she hinted, nudging the draenei in her side.
Leira stiffened. "Oh. Oh. Is it any good? Like, what's it do? Am I gonna grow any tentacles if I use it? I mean no offense!" she said suddenly, holding up her hands with a wry smile on her face. "I'm certain having extra limbs is nothing but an advantage, but I'd prefer to keep what I know."
"No tentacles," she assured. "All it does is sort of toughen you up the angrier you are. Physical resistance, spell resistance, all that stuff."
As they turned towards Sara's room, Leira tapped her chin. "Hmm, that does sound useful. Some extra life insurance is always handy. Oh, we're here."
"Huh?" she asked, before paying attention to how far they'd gone. Sure enough, they'd arrived. "Right." She opened the door and walked in, with Leira following her. Sara strode to her table and grabbed the glyph, showing it to Leira.
"Eugh, that's it huh?" she asked, placing a hand over her forehead as if the glyph were some painfully bright lamp. "You're sure there'll be no tentacles or anything? I hear Old God magic has a mind of its own."
"Sort of. It's not really sapient, but its will is that of the Old God that commands it. So if a mortal were to use C'Thun's magic, then C'Thun can tell its magic to corrupt the mortal from the inside. But it's my magic, I'm the one telling it what to do, so you'll be fine. Trust me, Leira," she pleaded.
She nodded. "Alright alright, you're the expert. I have a glyph of Bull Rush, I think that'd be good to replace."
Sara activated her magic, taking note of how Leira shivered whenever she did. "Bull Rush glyph, got it." Her powers pushed into Leira, and the draenei dry-heaved. It must have felt like what nature magic did to Sara, so she resolved not to linger. She searched, and in a moment she found her glyphs, arranged in a wheel with six spokes around her stomach. She reached over each one and rubbed her magic along it to see what it was, and on the fourth try she found a signature that matched a Bull Rush glyph. With a few snips of magic, she gutted the glyph and it vanished. Then she placed her new glyph against Leira's shirt and began to activate it.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Zap!
Leira doubled over and retched, so Sara ran over to support her. "I'm fine, I'm fine," she wheezed. After a moment Leira straightened up. "Ugh, thanks for the help." The draenei shivered. "Yeesh, that stuff feels awful."
Sara sat down in her chair and rubbed the back of her head nervously. "Heh, I guess it would. You'll have to let me know how effective it is later. Well, I have to get back to work," she explained, picking up a quill. "See you around."
"Wait, have you been in here the entire time since you got back?" Leira asked, looking around the dimly lit, sparsely decorated room.
"Given how poorly my mission went? I need to do better next time," she mumbled, already busying herself with mapping out the formulae of the brain link spell.
"Right, I heard about that. Southpoint Gate right?" Leira clip-clopped her way over to Sara's bed and sat on it. "Oh by the Light, you're beating yourself up over that? Sara listen, there was nothing you could do."
"That's the problem!" she shouted, slamming her hands on the table. "There are so many spells floating around in my head that could have done something about it and I don't know how to cast a single one of them!"
"Hey
hey, relax. I get it alright? But you can't just sit in here and work yourself to death."
"I'll resurrect myself," she said blandly.
Her friend smirked, but then stopped. "Wait. Is that, like, a thing you can do?"
She kept her eyes on her work. "I dunno, never tried it. Yogg-Saron could revive itself, at its full power. Takes a lot of magic to do that though, far more than just resurrecting someone else. Probably don't have enough."
Leira shook her head, her black hair flying. "That's not the point." She came over and forcefully turned her sheets of paper face down. "So our missions didn't go entirely as planned. Sara, you could stand to take a break. With that in mind... " She trailed off, and her glowing eyes seemed to narrow in wicked glee. "... me and some friends are going to Stonefire Tavern for some chatter. Wanna come with? Getting out will do you some good."
Sara paused. On the one hand she'd be going to an inn to socialize with others, and put off working to improve herself. Definitely not a good scenario. On the other hand, she was trying to curb her Old-God tendencies and maybe going out to this inn would help with that. Besides, it was a new experience and she didn't know what to expect. It might as well be random and wasn't that enticing? "Fine." But I won't like it, she refrained from saying. "Let me just get dressed and I'll meet you there. The Commons, right?"
"I'll hold you to it," Leira mock-threatened, walking over to the door. "See you soon!" she sang. The draenei left and closed the door behind her.
Sara sighed. Part of her was really tempted to just stay here and work on her magic, but no. She was going, even if she had to drag herself there.
The stipend she got was enough to let her afford a change of clothes, rather than just constantly washing the ones she'd brought with her when she escaped to Dalaran. The small room had enough space to let her fit in a wardrobe, which she flung open and began deliberating what to wear. And by deliberating, she meant closing her eyes and picked at random because who knew what she'd end up with?
In the end Sara found herself in a pale red blouse and a grass-green short skirt. She wore her hair down, like always, and wore some regular, brown leather shoes on her feet. After a moment's consideration, she tucked away a small pouch of gold and a waterskin into her bags and slung it over her back. With that done, she rubbed her eyes one last time and stepped out of her room.
Leaving the guild hall only took her a moment, and then she was walking through the Military Ward to the Commons.
She'd started to get used to the idea of being underground, even if looking at the vaunting ceiling did make her feel queasy. The Commons didn't do much to alleviate the feeling, even with the occasional gryphon flying in from above and twisting through the tunnels to deliver its passenger. Hordes of people crowded around each other, pushing and shoving in deliciously inscrutable patterns. The majority of the crowd was clustered around either the bank or the auction house, hoping to snag a good deal. In the middle of the Commons was a series of rectangular gaps in the ground, which went all the way to the molten rock flowing beneath Ironforge. Above it, however, was a metal mesh and in recent times, due to safety concerns, a second mesh had been added near the top to prevent people from falling down. Of course both could still be retracted to create trenches in case of invaders.
Sara stopped by one of those trenches and stared down into it. Magma stared back, churning slowly and angrily, and Sara wanted so badly to reach out and give it a way to vent that anger, to tell the liquid stone to rise through the mesh and do what it wished while she sat back and watched with a smile, watch it eat stone like melting ice. Then she shook her head and moved on. "Gotta stop that," she whispered to herself.
Stonefire Tavern was on the far end of the Commons, on the 'outer edge' of the wheel. She had to go past the auctioneer and the gates, which forced her to deal with being pushed and shoved. She gave as good as she got but still. Couldn't they watch where they were going?
She pushed her way into the inn. Sara hadn't been in a dwarven inn before, and while it was just as toasty warm as it was outside, the sudden switch from yellow, gnomish electric light to erratic orange torches was jarring. The din of thousands of people going about their business was replaced with lively chatter between patrons, along with the sharp stench of beer and mead. Square shaped tables were set out with four chairs at each. There were fully occupied tables that had stolen chairs from others to seat more than four, empty tables, and everything in between. Half a second after she walked in there was a burst of boisterous laughter from the far back corner.
Sara scanned the tavern with her eyes for a moment before she spotted Leira sitting at a table to the right with two others, a dwarven woman and night elf man. The former had fiery red hair in a bun, and the latter had hair the color of grass that went down to the small of his back.
Leira spotted her as she was walking over and waved her over to the one remaining seat. "Glad you could make it," she said with a wink. "Anra and Hammon just got here too."
"Glad to be here," she lied, sitting and throwing her bag under her chair. "Never met you two."
"Never met ya either," the dwarf said. "Saw you at the meeting though. How'd yer mission go?"
Sara hid a wince. "Poorly. We smashed the portals like we were supposed to, but by the time we got back to Southpoint Gate it'd been destroyed by infernals."
Anra frowned. "So not that well huh? Welcome to the club. Hammon and I were in Silverpine Forest. Tried to assassinate a dreadlord, even had some of these 'Apexis Crystals' to make sure he couldn't come back. Couldn't get close to him though! Slippery devil got away through a gateway and we barely escaped with our lives."
"Yeah," Leira said. "Mine didn't go so well either." Suddenly she looked behind Sara. Twisting around, she saw the barmaid had come to their table. "I'll have a flask of Stormwind Tawny to start and two turkey legs," Leira ordered, holding up two fingers.
"Moonberry Juice, caribou, and a Lagrave Stout," the night elf requested.
Anra slammed a fist on the table, startling everyone except Sara and the barmaid. "Five strips of jerky, a bowl of mutton stew, and let's go with three Foote Triples!" she demanded.
Sara blinked, but gave the menu on the wall a quick glance. After a moment she shrugged. "I'll just have a bowl of mutton stew," she said in a 'friendly' voice.
"Alrighty then," the barmaid said with a wink. "I'll get that for ya right away."
As she walked away, the rest of them focused back on Leira. "So as I was saying, my mission in Arathi didn't work out as I hoped. Legion had gotten to some of the elemental rings and was corrupting them and such, so obviously we were to go there and stop that. Went to the water ring, brought with us some shaman and all sorts of jugs of pure, clean water. We get there, and fucking eredar teleport in the fuck out of nowhere. And while we're fighting, they take our water and make it all demonic, then splash that into the ring. After that we had to call it quits. Got this from them too," she said, lifting her shift somewhat to expose a wide, rectangular patch of skin that was lighter blue than the skin around it.
They winced in sympathy at the sight of the healed burn, and Leira put her shirt back down. "Yeah, not good. Pretty sure Calven will be sending us out on another mission soon enough."
"After the Arathi Highlands they get to the Wetlands, right?" Sara asked. "But they have to go across the bridge to get there."
"That they do," Hammon said. "I think Menethil Harbor is going to bomb it to pieces," he said in a whisper. She supposed it was sensitive, classified information but honestly who was going to hear them? The tavern was loud enough as it was. "Then they can stage a defense at the choke point and buy us some time to go put the hurt on them."
They talked idly about their various missions until the barmaid returned with a platter filled with food precariously balanced on both arms. She set it down on the middle of the table. "Alright, there we go. Stormwind Tawny and two turk' legs for you, moonberry juice, caribou and a Lagrave Stout for you, mutton stew for you,"
she said with a gesture to Sara. "And three Foote Triples, five strips of jerky, and another mutton stew for you. Ha, enjoy!" she said before turning away.
Sara spooned up a bit of her stew and ate it. "There was a fel reaver at the Forge Camp I went to. Anything like that with you three?"
"Not with me," Leira said. "A lot of machines, but no reavers."
"We actually did see a few," Anra said. "Big mean ol' things. Weren't active though, but I'm guessin' they will be soon, eh?"
"So the invasion has gotten to that point," Hammon mused. "We'll have to deal with the Legion's technological side."
"Well good luck to them," Leira said, taking a swig of her flask. "Fel reavers can't get over a broken bridge."
They continued talking a little about the invasion as the others slowly made themselves drunk. Sara stuck with her seasoned stew, occasionally washing it down with some water from her bags. She didn't drink, after all. Their cheeks reddened - or in Leira's case, turned dark blue - though Anra didn't seem affected at all.
"... I'm just hopin' that, you know. I get into a fight soon," Leira said. "Got a new glyph today and I really want to test it out soon." She hiccuped a little, then bit another strip off her second turkey leg.
"Really las?" Anra asked, finishing off her fourth foamy jug. "What kinda glyph?"
"I dunno. Sara, what were you calling it?"
Two pairs of eyes locked on her, and she blanked. "Uh, I wasn't calling it anything. I guess... call it whatever you want?"
Leira nodded. "Right, right."
"What precisely do you mean ya don't know?" Anra asked. "Thought all them glyphs had names to them already."
Well, distributing more of them is one way to help the war effort, she thought. "I invented a new one. It feeds off emotions, makes her tougher the angrier she gets." She considered it. "If you want, I could invent new ones for you two, if you give me an idea of what you want."
Hammon was drunk to the point of near unconsciousness, so he didn't respond. On the other hand, Anra acted as though she was still entirely sober. "Sure, I'll think of it. Usually I'm big in the assassination thing, and Hammon's one of them priests of the Cult of Forgotten Shadows." A shadow priest? Now that was something she'd like to see.