Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  She had dealt with agony curses before. And while this one certainly burned more than any others, it wasn't going to stop her now. She cast the barrier so the pain vanished like a bad memory... and then a meteor of shadow magic crashed upon her.

  Sara gasped as her heart nearly froze solid. But Talgath's hands were already weaving another shadow crash, and this time she had the opportunity to see the purple crystals rocket towards her. Sara ducked behind one of the pillars of stone, which shattered under the onslaught.

  Okay, she thought. So the barrier won't protect me from everything.

  She flew behind another barrier, sparing a glance at Talgath in the meantime. The skin above his heart was no longer fiery, but rather dark purple like her magic. It pulsed in tune with the demon's heartbeat, and each time it did it sent lines of taint spreading across his body. He screamed and screamed, but the shadow crashes kept coming.

  Sara ducked behind a barrier, then another. She was already so cold and frail from the first one, and she was out of health potions. She had to dodge.

  The next one smashed against her shelter, shattering the spire like glass. But Sara was already moving, and Talgath's spells were getting more intense. That meant one of two things: the corruption was getting more intense and making him stronger, or the corruption was getting more intense and he was getting desperate. Either way, she just had to hold on a little longer...

  Then she was out of barriers, without enough magic to make new ones. So... she had to improvise.

  Aiming was hard. There was something in her right eye and something warm dribbling from her nose, but she cast a shadow bolt anyway and aimed it right at the incoming shadow crash. It was somewhat off center, but it still hit. The eredar's missile detonated harmlessly in mid air. Meanwhile, Talgath retched and bent over, vomiting blackness onto the ground, and then that blackness came alive and formed spears to try stabbing his shins. He stomped it dead with his hooves and panted heavily, sending out another shadow crash.

  This one didn't fly right at Sara. This one went over her head and then arced behind her, so she had to follow it carefully to blow it up. It didn't hit her directly, but it was close enough that her heart stuttered from the shadow magic.

  Talgath's body was criss-crossed with trails of corruption now, and if she looked closely she thought she could see something growing out of his back. The left and right manaburn shards splintered and vanished, but he didn't appear to notice. His glowing purple eyes - ha! - narrowed and his hands came up. Massive amounts of shadow magic began to gather and gather.

  It took Sara two seconds into the cast to realize what it was. The same spell that had instantly killed the pit lord. She didn't think her barrier would protect her from it, so she had to interrupt it. Only problem was, Sara didn't know any spells to interrupt casting. So... she again had to improvise.

  Her arms shook and using magic was like getting blood from a stone, but she reached into the eredar's mind. There was a forest of mental lines, and she raked her power through all of them. Talgath's spell fizzled out and he went still, his jaw slack... but then demon magic repaired the lines and he was back to normal.

  A tentacle burst from his back and hit him in the back of the head with a shadow bolt.

  Sara wasn't even floating anymore, her levitation spell had run out and now she sat helplessly on the ground. Talgath flailed his arms wildly and shot a shadow crash into the sky, then another one at her. But all she had to do for that one was lie down, and it passed harmlessly above her body. The eredar's body was more purple than red at this point, and Sara could feel his soul being riddled with holes. He fell to his knees as more tendrils exploded from his body, each of them assaulting him with dark skulls. He toppled forward and crushed the two on his chest, but three more appeared on the back of his legs. He forced his head up, clawing at the ground, and glared at her.

  "What... are you?" he snarled.

  With the absolute last of her magic, without even a barrier remaining, Sara extended a dark green beam into the eredar and lifted. His body began to twitch, and above him the green outline of an uncorrupted eredar appeared, but despite the healthy appearance it was filled with gaping holes. Still, the soul was intact enough to clutch its throat and glare hatefully down at her.

  "I'm the Old God of Death," she answered, before smashing the soul into the ground and watching it shatter with a wailing howl. Each individual piece of Talgath's soul went their separate way, and disappeared into nothingness.

  Talgath the Inexorable was dead.

  Sara collapsed on her back, breaths quick and shallow. She could see the clouds, black and putrid, and from them infernals continued to fall elsewhere in the city. Whum, whum, whum.

  "Holy shit!" she heard a familiar voice shout. Sara rolled her head over and, to her surprise, there was Leira, fully armored and weaponized. "Sara you're alive!"

  "Hey yourself," Sara whispered as the draenei ran over. "What're you doing here? I thought you were hunting infernals," she muttered, her head spinning awfully.

  "By the Light, lets get you cleaned up." A cold, grimy gauntlet went over Sara's head and wiped something out of her eyes. "Here, let me just... " Something tore, and then there was a bandage being wrapped around Sara's forehead. "Come on, we're evacuating the city."

  "But... I killed him," she explained. "He's dead."

  She saw Leira look over at the massive, defiled eredar lying in the Trade District. "Holy shit. It doesn't matter though! Infernals are coming down hard, we're getting out of here. Everyone else has already evacuated through the Cathedral, Deeprun Tram's being collapsed. I've got a mage not too far from here, come on. Let's go."

  "Leira," she croaked as the draenei stood. "Leira, I can't walk and I am completely out of mana."

  Her friend swore. "Alright, then let's try this!" Armored arms went underneath Sara, and she nearly threw up as she was lifted into the air and slung over Leira's shoulders, facing back. "When did you get so heavy?" the warrior joked.

  "Shut up," she said halfheartedly. Void, why was everything spinning?

  "Yeah yeah, come on." Then Leira was running and Sara really did throw up, all over her armor and weapons too.

  She jostled up and down, left and right, and every second it felt like she'd fall off and crash to the stone. Everything was blurred and spinning around so fast. Soon she heard voices, only one of them familiar, and she tried to tell them off but her throat was too parched. The distant whum whum whum was deafening, and then she was surrounded by arcane light. Sara fell, faster and faster, then she lurched up. The world transformed into earthy browns and toasty oranges. Then everything did cartwheels and she passed out.

  Zelfan

  Everything was complete.

  While Lord Talgath and his army were off distracting the mortals by invading Stormwind, Zelfan and his underlings had cleaned out Karazhan. The mortals had no clue they were there. They had been extremely quiet. His people, the gan'arg, moved quietly and stealthily when they had to and the environment of Deadwind Pass lent their coloration to camouflage.

  Karazhan was already a hollow shell of its former self when they arrived, and the few remaining ghosts, going about their once-duties in backstage corridors, were disintegrated easily enough by fel beams or muscular demon brutes. With the musclebound demons clearing a way forward, it gave Zelfan and his minions ample opportunity to clean out Karazhan's opera hall.

  The wooden benches, rotten with age and disuse, were overturned and incinerated, ashes swept aside. The cracked marble floors turned black and putrid under the presence of the lesser eredar and nathrezim. The glorious red curtains and gold frills of the theater itself were torn to ribbons by Zelfan's own claws. Rafters were shattered to rubble, and the ghostly audience was reduced to so much ectoplasm.

  Then the REAL work could begin.

  On his march to Stormwind, Talgath had intentionally left a line of portals for this very purpose. Raw materials from thousands of sterile and sterilized worlds were impo
rted to Karazhan via a portal in the stables. Zelfan and his engineers put their skills to work, manipulating the dark metal into claws, hooks, furnaces, power sources. Hoops, rings, until the shattered opera stage was nothing more than a colossal circular portal, upright, for the Legion to use.

  Putting one last twist to tighten a bolt, Zelfan stepped back and wiped his diminutive gan'arg hand across his forehead. Finally. Everything was complete. He cupped a mouth to his hand and shouted to the other side of the room, "Pull the lever!"

  Another gan'arg, shorter than even Zelfan, reached out a grubby hand and grabbed a neon green lever. With a tug it went down, and the portal began to hum.

  Everyone stepped away from the portal, jumping across the stage's gap to land in the blackened audience theater. The giant circular contraption began to hum, fel energy glowing within its frame, swirling around its perimeter. The giant hole in the middle flashed. Three balls of green mist flew together into the center and exploded. Then the portal was open, like a black hole with no gravity. Zelfan could see the infinite expanse of the Twisting Nether beyond, speckled with stars and flowing streaks of mana. The portal hummed and whirred, and then the gray outline of a figure appeared on the other side. The figure lifted a leg and moved it forward.

  From the portal, a red leg that ended in a massive hoof crashed onto the ground, shattering the marble tiles.

  The other hoof came out a moment later. Following it was a broad torso with a golden amulet over it. Hands that ended in claws larger than a felguard. A head locked in a perpetual scowl with solar eyes. Then lastly came two enormous dragon wings. The right one stretched out to the side and relaxed, only for the left wing to do the same. The eredar looked around at Karazhan, at Zelfan and his underlings, and grinned.

  Lord Kil'jaeden had arrived.

  Kil'jaeden

  He knelt in Durotar. Like his brother Archimonde did many years ago, Kil'jaeden's claws traced lines in the sand. An acrid wind blew over him, rustling his facial tendrils, but nothing would so much as warrant his irritation.

  He growled low in his throat, refreshing the veil of invisibility over him. Before him was the Horde capital, Orgrimmar, in all its defiant 'glory'. And today, it would come crashing down as a firm reminder to the mortals of this world as to just how little time they had left.

  His claw made a few more marks in the desert, and then he stopped. Satisfied, the Deceiver stood and gently flexed his wings, inspecting the runes he'd drawn into the sand. He lifted his left hand and clenched, summoning his vast, Titan-given powers. The ground heaved and trembled in agony, sand spilling upwards into a scale model of the city before him.

  Kil'jaeden spoke in Eredun, his voice low and guttural as he inspected the model for any inaccuracies.

  "They have grown fat," he mused to himself. "Fat and spoiled, believing themselves mighty and unconquerable. A single skilled guild and they claim their planet unbreakable." Kil'jaeden huffed. "A lich, brittle and cold, and they claim him a lord. A night elf with a sliver of my former servant's power, and they see him as king of the broken Draenor. A human imbued with a fraction of my powers, and they claim him a scourge upon the world. Elementals that have grown sloppy. Crippled gods. Lizards given powers by the lesser Titans."

  There were no imperfections in his model, as was expected. He poked the gates of his construction, and the real Orgrimmar's metal barricade dented. "These conquests and they see themselves indestructible. They dream they will repel us, then march upon Argus and eradicate us." Kil'jaeden scowled, baring his fangs, and loomed over the animated sand. In what was to come, millions would die by his hand. In the weeks to come, countless more would follow. "Their hopes, I'll shatter. Their dreams of conquest, I'll destroy."

  Kil'jaeden lifted a hoof, and raised his voice to resound upon the dead and blasted wastes.

  "Let the unraveling of this world commence!"

  His hoof came down on Orgrimmar.

  Sara

  Sara despaired.

  It wasn't that she was in the infirmary, that was fine. Many people were hurt, and she got off lightly. It was that they were stretched so thin, that her worst nightmares were coming true. It was a steel hand closing over her heart. It was the doors of fate slamming shut in her face, cutting off her choices. Limiting her, confining her. Burying her.

  She'd taken a hefty amount of shadow damage, and at some point received a vigorously bleeding head wound, but it wasn't anything that couldn't be dealt with. In fact, she was already set to leave, she just had one last thing to finish first.

  "And what happened then, lass?" the dwarven guard asked her, scribbling on a notepad.

  "I found myself, despite being cautioned otherwise, engaged in battle with Talgath," she explained, keeping out some of the more sensitive details. "I quickly realized that, spell for spell, I would not be able to defeat him before running out of mana, so I needed time and distance. I collapsed the bridge and retreated to the Trade District to look for resources. By the time Talgath followed me there, I'd managed to utilize the dust and my own shadow magic to trigger a sort of allergic reaction," she continued, outright lying where she found need. The guard just ate it all up. "It was a close call, but with the modified strategy I was able to kill him. Shortly after, Leira Vindalis found me and brought me back via portal to Ironforge, where I promptly passed out from my injuries. That is all."

  "I see," he muttered, writing down the last of it. "Thank you for your time, miss. I'll let you go back to your hall now."

  "Thank you," she said gloomily as he paced away. She reclined into her bed and closed her eyes. "I'll get right on it," Sara groused. She didn't want to get up. But she had to, didn't she? Sara opened her eyes, swung out of bed, and got up.

  Big mistake.

  Immediately her legs erupted into twin pillars of agony. Her breath caught in her throat, and she went down. Even when she wasn't putting any weight on her legs, they continued to pulse, a dull ache that never, ever went away. She put her hands out and pushed herself up, but even they sent up twinges of pain. The other people in the infirmary - and they were in her section so they were mostly recovered as well - all stared at her.

  Stop looking at me, idiots, she thought, before casting the levitation spell on herself. Her body hoisted itself into the air, dangling nauseously. Not even bothering to take in the scenery she levitated forward, head down.

  Everything was going wrong. Stormwind was reduced to rubble. There were whispers that Kil'jaeden walked Azeroth. And she was a cripple from rampant over channeling. Sara might as well amputate her legs for all the good they were now. If she kept going the way she was now, her arms would follow. Sure, with all the knowledge of an Old God she could probably find a way to reverse it, but what was the point? It was all for naught.

  She had to go to Ulduar.

  But she couldn't! She made a promise to only do that as a last resort.

  But how much more of a 'last resort' did things need to get? Everything was going horribly!

  But was that even right? She only had a ground level view of the war. The higher ups had to know more, right? They wouldn't be sitting idle, twiddling their thumbs. They never had in the past. She had to trust they had a plan, right? Nobody wanted their planet flamebroiled.

  She hovered through the Mystic Ward, stomach churning. Sara chanced a glance around in an attempt to distract her from her thoughts, but no so luck. The evidence was everywhere to be seen.

  Ironforge was packed to the breaking point. Even though many of Stormwind's citizens had evacuated to Darnassus and the Exodar, Gnomeregan wasn't sized for anything larger than a dwarf, and that meant a lot of overflow. She could hover above the crowds, but there they were regardless. Overflowing from the Commons, sitting in the streets. Young children crying, adults murmuring and calming them. Hungry, thirsty and tired. Ironforge couldn't hold so many for an extended period of time, especially not with farmland going up in flames.

  "They have a plan," she told herself as she approached t
he Military Ward. "They have a plan, they have a plan."

  The Military Ward, at least, wasn't nearly as crowded. Few civilians would come here, and Sara was only in the infirmary for a day. The soldiers with more severe injuries would still be bedridden, so the cavernous area was nearly deserted. She was just going to... she didn't even know.

  Before Sara knew it, she was in the Chimes's guild hall. Then she was in her room, and despite spending the past day in a sick bed she could think of nothing better than collapsing in her bed and going to sleep, putting to bed her traitorous thoughts.

  Sara floated herself over her bed and dispelled her levitation. Gravity quickly took hold of her again and, with a quiet thud, she fell face first onto her pillow. She groaned once, and was out like a light.

  Knock knock knock!

  Sara cracked open an eye. She didn't know how long it'd been, but her stomach felt cavernous. Oh what now?

  Knock knock knock!

  "Who is it?" she asked, getting up out of her bed. Sara remembered to levitate this time, sparing herself the humiliation of falling to the ground in pain.

  "Is this Miss Smithers's residence?" came a gruff woman's voice from the other side of the door.

  Oh no, she thought. "Yes. This is her speaking. It's open, by the way."

  The door creaked open and a dwarven woman walked in, her red hair done up in a braid. Her plate armor, missing only the helmet, clinked and clanked. "Miss Sara, I hope this isn't a bad time," she said, looking up at her levitating form.

  Every time's a bad time. She put on a warm smile. "No, not at all. Just tired from, you know. The war."

  The lady smiled and nodded knowingly. "Aye, I know how it is. I mean no inconvenience, but Captain Hammerfist was lookin' through a few files and took special interest in you. Seems you're something special sweetie!"