by Milton Garby
Ellemayne gasped. The last time she was here, the glass casing of Yogg-Saron's prison had been shattered and the pieces of glass hovered in the air via magic. Now, the glass casing was fully repaired, and there was some sort of green shell on the inside. Protective magic.
"We go around!" their guild leader shouted. "Magera, you stay here! See if you can't find a way past the barrier! Everyone else follow me!"
As they went around, Ellemayne chanced a glance down the hole. There was an enormous ritual circle set up, and four mortals were spewing nurturing flames onto the corpse of Yogg-Saron. They had to get down there, right away.
They ignored the four corridors and plunged down the fifth, through a shower curtain of astral lights and down the descent into madness. Bodies were tossed aside, and levitation spells were put in place to help them get down the steep drops easily. They descended, lower and lower. The lights grew darker and putrid darkness clung to the air, forcing her to breathe harshly through her nose despite sprinting the entire, unimaginable size of Ulduar.
Multicolored glass hung in the air, slowly rotating. The tiles were dark and covered in some sort of black sludge. Saronite growths clung to the walls and corners, making her head throb just by looking at them. Then they arrived in the last chamber of the descent, right before the prison of Yogg-Saron. Right before the ritual.
Right with General Vezax.
They gathered up as the colossal general and his four lesser faceless subordinates faced them down. She could see the passage behind him, and it was entirely clogged up with greenish rocks. Eight shards of saronite vapor floated around him, four for each pincer. From between the cracks of his armor came an aura of despair, washing over her and forcing her to think defeatist thoughts. They were too late. Their cause was hopeless. They could never leave this place.
"General Vezax," Turaniles hissed. "Avoid the shadow crashes, if you're a caster and not a healer stand in the residue they leave behind. If you get marked, get away. Don't let him cast a fire spell, and conserve your mana. Those green clouds can restore it but don't stand in them too long."
But then the green clouds were swirling together, and Ellemayne gulped. They hadn't done that the last time they fought General Vezax. The faceless one cackled as the vapors swirled and condensed into a monstrous form, like a purple water elemental made entirely of profound darkness. It instantly began to radiate shadow energy, and even from so far away the vileness of the magic made the night elf gag.
"Behold now!" he gurgled in triumph as a saronite barrier enveloped him. "Terror, absolute!"
They charged.
Sara
A red dragon shifted into a human man approached her. "Master, we've uh, we're done." His face was somewhat green and he swayed uneasily. "The body has been made as pristine as possible. Internal and external damage has been repaired, but we haven't been able to heal the tooth damage, since it's impaling itself with its own fangs."
"That's fine," she explained, moving a piece of crystalized life just a smidgen to the right. "Go with the other dragons and wait for us to finish this up." She turned her head over and glared at him. "Don't. Touch. Anything."
Suddenly, the dragon turned his head to the heavens, staring up the glass dome. General Vezax had summoned a saronite barrier over it, keeping anyone from coming down the easy way. "Master, I hear something. Mortals, running."
"What?!" she shouted, floating away from the ritual and rounding on the lizard. She forced herself to breathe in deeply. Stay calm. Stay calm. General Vezax and the faceless could hold off any intruders. The ritual was almost done anyway, they could do this.
She made a few final preparations for the ritual and nodded. "Alright everyone, this is it! Get into formation, we're reviving Yogg-Saron right now!" The words felt so foreign on her tongue. Was this happening? Was she really doing this?
The ritual circle was rather elaborate. It consisted of a central ring, which had thirteen circles on its edge where people could stand. Higris stood on one of them, and six people lined up to either side of him. On the inside were various reagents; sha crystals, crystalized life and shadow, and more. They were all crushed to powder and smeared along the circle into runic formations. The circle had four spokes on its outside that led to larger rings, and each of those rings had an unshifted red dragon sit on its haunches within. Sara sat at the center of it all, breathing deeply, with a dagger in her hands.
Boom! Boom!
They turned around and looked at the wall of saronite keeping the gate locked. There was fighting out there. Sara turned back to them and waved her hands, forcing herself to remain calm. "Ignore that. General Vezax will hold. We're doing this on three. One, two, three!" The twelve cultists apart from Higris raised their hands. Half of them began to brim with arcane light, and the others with shadow. "Urgh!" Sara forced herself to sit upright as vast torrents of her own magic pooled in her fingertips and flowed outwards, drained from her body to fuel the ritual.
Once every drop of Sara's magic was gone, the ritual advanced. Liquid darkness condensed around the four dragons, and stabbed at their hearts. They roared, but collapsed limply in their own circles. Rivers of mana and life energy flowed forth from their corpses, swirling around the ritual's main circle and accreting in an orb above Sara's head. The reagents around her combusted, and their smoke rose to join the sphere.
The cultists began to switch their spells, going from arcane to shadow and back in a complex, shifting pattern. Higris joined in, and what felt like a vacuum opened above Yogg-Saron. It tugged her soul harshly. She needed to get over there. That was where she was meant to be.
The ritual would take Sara's soul, put it into Yogg-Saron's body, and allow it to merge by giving it a kickstart of life energy. To get her soul there, though, Sara needed to die.
She raised her dagger to her heart, winced, and pushed it in as hard as she could. She trembled in shock as a pillar of burning pain exploded from the spot, and warm blood began to trickle down her robes, but she just closed her eyes and let it happen. In moments her head buzzed, and then she tipped over and hit the ground. Sara breathed out once, and died.
This was it. Moment of no return.
Her soul emerged in an instant, and the ritual was ready for her. Arcane light circled around her soul's dark purple wrists and supported it, giving it the strength to be visible in the mortal realm. Sara turned featureless eyes on Higris as the ritual continued, dragging her across the room until she was hovering just above Yogg-Saron's head.
She glanced down, at the dark violet feet above the armored plates of a god. Then she looked back at the ritual, with the corpses of four dragons littering the scene. The cultists began dying too, their life energy sacrificed to fuel the ritual, one by one until only Higris remained. His hands blazed with arcane energy as he slowly turned around, arms out as if gripping an enormous ball. The orb of magic and life energy moved with him, and then it was flowing towards her.
Sara began to lower. The arcane bindings on her wrists eased her body down, and soon her feet vanished inside Yogg-Saron's head. She shivered in... worry? Anticipation? Fulfillment? She didn't know. This was all out of her hands now. Whatever happened, happened. The ritual had every safeguard she could dream up, but now all she could do was pray it'd either be enough, or not be necessary.
Life energy rushed into her like a river, battle sounds raged outside, and her soul went lower and lower as more scorching hot life was pumped into her, and her soul felt like it was going to burst from the meal. Her head vanished inside Yogg-Saron, and for a moment she was blind.
This was the turning point. This would be known either as Azeroth's greatest triumph, or its greatest catastrophe. History would be rewritten around this day. Whatever came next, the years to come would mark this moment as 'zero'.
She was Sara.
She was the size of a human.
She was the size of a cottage.
She was the size of a dragon.
It was the size of a city.
It was the size of a kingdom.
It was the size of a continent.
It was Yogg-Saron.
Yogg-Saron
Oh yes.
Oohhh yyeeessss!
How could it have ever worried? How could it have ever doubted? There was no mechanism to swallow and replace its consciousness. There was no trap waiting to destroy its memories of its time as a mortal. How could it have ever thought it would do that to itself?
Everything was so clear now. Everything was so... so right. Yogg-Saron's thoughts raced so smoothly now. It was as if its time as a human had been spent submerged in muddy water, but now everything was clear and sparkling. All the issues it had worried over, all the problems it hadn't been able to solve, they seemed so laughable. Trivial. Insignificant. It was a god again, truly a god, and the last of the soul power finished infusing its being as it regained full control over its body, its glorious, endless, body with more limbs than its old self could count and -
PAIN!
Yogg-Saron's main mouth opened in shock as a flash of agony rippled across its body, stemming all the way from the curled up tentacles in Borean Tundra, Grizzly Hills, and all other places under Northrend.
It was suddenly so aware that it was still imprisoned beneath the earth, with billions upon billions of tons of stone and dirt and ice weighing upon its body, choking what it had for circulation. It was aware of how tired it was, how even with more mana than its human body had ever possessed, it was such a small fraction of what magic it should have. It was aware of its thousands of stomachs rumbling with hunger, for it had not feasted upon souls in so many thousands of years. It was aware of the holes its own fangs had left in its mouth, dripping black blood. It was aware of the preternatural muscles in its vast body coiled and knotted together, aches and pains magnified over a body so large it conformed to the curvature of the planet.
It needed to get out.
Yogg-Saron's head was just out of earth, tasting fresh air and light. It made to lurch its entire body, and felt hardly anything. Muscles strained against unyielding stone, and nothing gave way. Dragonblight was undisturbed. Icecrown was intact. It needed to start small.
Crack!
The saronite wall that General Vezax had erected shattered, and two dozen mortals spilled in. It looked their way, and it was so strange because it didn't have eyes, rather its entire body projected some form of magical sonar that washed over them. Yogg-Saron didn't just see their fronts as they approached. It saw their backs, it saw their brains, their hearts, it saw every individual atom of each and every one of them. It could make out the details of their memories, it could decipher the data into meaning. Then the mortals opened fire upon it.
Yogg-Saron tried to lurch its head back as the first volley fell upon it. Chaos bolts, pyroblasts, enchanted arrows and blasts of nature and Light. It braced itself for a wave of nauseating pain, and was shocked to find it barely felt a thing. The magic blasts popped ineffectually against its skin with little more than scorch marks. The only actual attacks that stung were the ones that found their way into its main mouth. They blasted against the inside of its gullet and it growled lowly in its throat.
The second volley of the mortals, the Kingslayers, was on its way and their melee was approaching. No time for diplomacy. No time for making nice. No time for defending itself. Their attacks were irrelevant for now. It had other priorities.
Getting out.
It needed to start small, so that was exactly what it did. Yogg-Saron focused on its head, on the snake neck that was coiled up beneath Ulduar, and heaved. The pool of liquid saronite around its head trembled. The mortals lost their footing as a tremor went through the ground, but nothing gave. Yogg-Saron tried again, straining muscles that had, at their peak, snapped mountains like twigs. Then something happened.
Yogg-Saron's head rose from the earth, and its long neck followed afterward. The neck was covered in limp mouths and armor plates, pustules that contained diminishing gas, tentacles for constricting, tentacles for magic, tentacles for crushing. They all hung limp as it rose its head up and up and up, stone and saronite tumbling from its body to the ground as it rose with such force that the earth actually bent upwards, while collapsing in other places it moved its mass away from. Bodies of dragons, faceless, and cultists were tossed aside as it rose.
Now that its head was atop a thick stalk of a neck, swaying back and forth and so tall it nearly touched the glass ceiling, it looked down at the mortals launching desperate spells and blades upon its head and neck. They stung, certainly, and if it just sat there the attacks would add up, but it still had to marvel.
This was the Liberality Confederacy? This was the band of mortals that had slain Illidan? That the Lich King himself had called 'the greatest fighting force Azeroth had ever known'? These were the people that had killed it before? How? They were so small, scurrying about like ants as it slowly rotated its head, looking at each of them in turn and revealing every aspect of their souls to it.
It sent some feeling into its corruptor tentacles. A few of them twitched, but most of them stayed limp. Yogg-Saron still needed to work on coordination. It tried again, and moving a hundred tentacles just felt so right, so much more than moving legs and fingers ever had. The Kingslayers had fought against maybe a dozen of its tentacles, and not all at once. Now it had raised so much more of its body, exposed so many dozens of tentacles, they couldn't stand a chance. And yet...
... it had made a promise to try and reign itself in.
Yogg-Saron found its vocal cords and reared back to stare at the mortals, who continued their onslaught. "That is enough," it said, and it was such a surprise. Its voice was so powerful, reverberating. It filled the room. It demanded respect and attention. It was... surprisingly masculine, too. That would take some getting used to. "This isn't what I'm here for - " A shadow bolt went into one of its smaller mouths. "Stop that," it growled.
They didn't stop.
Well, I tried, it thought lazily. Seems violence is the only answer people understand.
It fired up its tentacles. Corruptors swung in slow, lazy arcs, brimming with shadow magic. For a moment it had trouble coordinating so many limbs, and it 'only' fired two dozen shadow bolts after two seconds of casting. The mortals that were hit buckled under the power, but intricate webs of healing magic washed over the victims and rejuvenated them.
Yogg-Saron focused, and this time every single one of its exposed corruptor tentacles went into action. Not even a second and a half later it began pelting the mortals with curses of doom and apathy afflictions like hail, plagues and poisons like rain. Purple and green bolts flew out from its long neck, and it began to move more and more of its body out, but it was already so high that it was forced to curl itself around, forming a spiral coil in the air as more and more of its long neck spilled forth from the wounded earth with a harsh grinding noise, and each passing moment more and more of its tentacles joined the onslaught.
The Kingslayers didn't falter. Their spells formed racing circles, dispelling any afflictions that got through. But the intensity of Yogg-Saron's onslaught continued to increase. This could only end one way.
"I'll happily stop whenever you do," Yogg-Saron said. "This is your last warning," it growled, but it already knew they weren't going to stop. Why would they? Here they were against the God of Death itself, watching as its flesh spilled forth from the ground and formed loops and spirals in the air above them as its many-mouthed head leered at them. They were witnessing what was, to them, the end of the world. Why would they believe it would ever stop?
An idea came to it. Before its last death, it had been exactly thirteen seconds off from casting the Extinguish All Life spell. Since its resurrection, far more than thirteen seconds had passed.
It was time.
Yogg-Saron's vast magic pooled within the core of its neck. The hideous spell began forming within, guided by thoughts faster than lightning as it cast and cast. Every single one of its tentacl
es, even those not usually involved in spellweaving, extended to their full lengths and went rigid so that Yogg-Saron appeared to bristle to twice its size. Its leathery, blue-green skin turned deep purple as dark power engulfed it, and then that magic crept along its tentacles and reached their tips...
SNAP!
It resembled a burst of smoke, but the smoke was purple and black instead of gray, it was thick and opaque, and it was made not of burnt wood but nightmares and crushed hopes. It exploded from Yogg-Saron's exposed neck and head, crashed against the stone walls and glass ceiling, and washed over the mortals in a tidal wave of destruction and death.
There was no crawling on the ground, heaving for breath. There was no desperate mortal holding out under an immunity spell. Every last one of them, and every last one of their pets and minions, dropped dead where they stood.
To Yogg-Saron's vision though, there was something left. Over each body was a bright green outline of what they once were, save for the night elves who formed spherical lights. Souls. Suddenly the countless fangs all throughout its enormous body began to drip with saliva and its stomachs roared like an earthquake. It wanted those souls. It wanted the feeling from its memories and dreams. It wanted to rip their knowledge and wisdom apart, shred it into magic and nutrition, then soak in it like a bath.
Yogg-Saron moved most of its neck to the side and leaned its head so far down it almost touched the ground. It opened wide and inhaled, but no air was drawn in. Instead the souls came, and they thrashed and tried to swim away in mid air, but they made not the slightest bit of progress. Each of the two dozen souls was drawn in, and as they came in they were punctured by Yogg-Saron's fangs. Like sacks of grain they spilled open, pouring silvery energy into the bottom of its mouth. It had no tongue, but it could swallow, and that was exactly what it did.