by Milton Garby
The Scourge's necrotic energies combusted, burning them all alive.
The mortals in Kalimdor screamed and were shackled, brought to heel by the qiraji in the south and the n'raqi in the north as they tried to plead for mercy, or to see their loved ones one more time.
The ones in the Eastern Kingdoms likewise fell to the mantid.
Between the two continents, opposite from where the Maelstrom had been, the two gods fought. They clambered over each other, laughing and splashing in the ocean, magical attacks flying out of the atmosphere. The twilight sky deepened to blood red. Souls streamed to them.
It was all as it should have been but... Yogg-Saron couldn't help but feel something was missing. Something was wrong. But what? Leira was still in her pocket dimension, safe and undiscovered. Outland would be light years away and growing more distant. The Pantheon would never come back and even if they did, just because they prevailed once didn't mean the Old Gods couldn't win a rematch. Everything was just like the good old days.
No, that was just it. They weren't just like the good old days. Where was N'Zoth to cheer on Yogg-Saron? Where was Y'Shaarj to try and give pointers to either of the duelists? Where was C'Thun to carve the mountains into twisted artwork? Less than half their number remained. Two Old Gods were not five, and Yogg-Saron had gone through a reincarnation cycle to boot. It was… not exactly an imposter, but the memories were echoes and its experience was shallow. Things would never be like they were again.
But… it wouldn't give this up. It had fought so, so hard to get to the point where the planet was its playground. Yogg-Saron just had to be happy with this world. Didn't it? Of course it did. Hope's End pushed down the queasy feeling in its stomachs and focused on the fight.
The uneasiness resurfaced within a second, and nothing it did could make it vanish entirely.
Yogg-Saron
Days passed.
Then weeks.
Then months.
To its Titan-born residents, Azeroth was unrecognizable. Under the power of Therazane and her earth elementals, the landscape was a constantly shifting mass of stone. Sometimes the masses aligned so that the planet was speckled with islands. Sometimes there were massive continents of wildly varying shape and number, broken intermittently with volcanoes and lava flows. Sometimes the world was mostly subsumed by oceans. Sometimes there was hardly any water left. Beaches of sand, canyons, mountain ranges, uprooted hills levitating in the atmosphere. It all shifted unpredictably.
The air was similarly chaotic. Sometimes it was calm and still. Sometimes the wind threatened to rip flesh from bone. Waterspouts, tornadoes, hurricanes, storms and more raged across the land at the whims of the Old Gods, painting the red sky with white clouds. The oceans varied wildly between combinations of calm and wild, salt and fresh, freezing and boiling.
The Black Empire was once again established. Unnatural metals were unearthed and used to build structures of unique designs that could withstand the rampant changes of environment. Vast citadels spread across the earth like cancer. The n'raqi, mantid and qiraji joined together in placing beneath them the races they had sought to subjugate for so long. Rivers of darkness shrouded the world; nothing was untouched.
Currently, Yogg-Saron's true from rested in its colossal throne at the north pole. Its vast consciousness was split across many tasks. Savoring the souls it received via sacrifice. Singling out mortals to give its personal attention, and more. One part of its awareness was focused on an avatar.
The troll man it created was on one of the floating hills, at the upper part of the planet's atmosphere. Purple light flared around 'his' feet as he slid down the hill's thick snowy covering.
Red snow, because why stick with white if you could change things?
He skied down the floating, tumbling slopes, Tsa'Thannon's tauren woman avatar behind him. She was closing in alarmingly fast, but he was almost at the edge. Yogg-Saron pondered what to do rapidly. He still had two of his allotted concussive blasts, but he'd save that for later.
His avatar's skin prickled, and he ducked, descending into a split as Tsa'Thannon sent a blast of compressed air through where his head had been just a moment ago.
"That's two down!" he jeered, accelerating forward and off the edge of the floating rock. Crimson powder followed after him as he tumbled, high above the world, with Tsa'Thannon right behind him.
Weightlessness overtook him. He took a moment to take in the view. Azeroth extended all around, and they were so high up he could see the curvature of the world, and the reddish air far below. Stormclouds, in giant anvil shapes, clung just above the land, crackling with electricity and casting shadows beneath. Lesser clouds dotted the airspace between them, everything from wispy cirrus to dense sheets of stratus. In the distance was a hurricane, enormous and smooth. From so high up it appeared stationary.
The oceans were blue and filled with the white froth of waves. Land dotted the waters. The portion of Azeroth they were over currently had a series of small islands dotting it. Connecting them were black wires – bridges from up close – and each island was a multitude of colors. Purple, green, neon orange, whatever fungi, plants, microbes and animals that Yogg-Saron and Tsa'Thannon decided to cook up.
There was also Tsa'Thannon's body in the distance. The colossal gray starfish-like creature was flush against the ground, contending with the hurricane in size. Spikes rose up past Yogg-Saron's avatar and straight out of the atmosphere. Even from this distance, the troll avatar could see its millions of tentacles waving about.
Then gravity took control again, and Yogg-Saron's sightseeing came to an abrupt end. He went plummeting down onto the next snow-covered floating rock, Tsa'Thannon right behind him.
The two of them continued to ski, blasting each other with the various allotted magics. In this case, some restrictions were allowed. They were not rules of a society to follow, made to restrict him and keep him from unleashing what he could really do. They were the rules of a game, restrictions put in place to test them, push them, make them think and plan and be surprised by what the other planned.
Rock by rock, drift by drift, they lowered. The atmosphere screamed around them, going so fast it felt like they'd ignite into shooting stars. Yogg-Saron laughed, then his laughter was cut off when Tsa'Thannon's final concussive blast caught him in the side, sending him into a rock so hard he left a crater. He recovered, only to find the 'tauren woman' had already skied off the rock and into the air, vanishing into a cloudbank.
He growled, pulled himself out and followed, plunging into the fluffy vapor. The moment he did, wild winds blasted him to the side so hard his avatar nearly threw up. The disorientation was… fascinating. He had no idea which way was up or down!
Eventually, the droplets stinging his eyes gave way to open skies. Ahead, he could see Tsa'Thannon's avatar plummeting for the next rock like a comet. The rocks had been uprooted at random and tossed into the air haphazardly with no concern for making a path. They'd play it by the ear. After all, even if the avatars could feel pain, the Old Gods themselves were functionally invincible.
Tsa'Thannon was getting awfully close to making landfall, though. Yogg-Saron had used up all his concussive blasts, but he still had a few fireballs and frostwalls saved up for this occasion. He waved his hand and a wall of frozen water appeared before Tsa'Thannon… but by then he was moving so fast he just shot right through it.
"Oh no," he said. Yogg-Saron threw out his remaining spells, forcing the tauren to weave between fireballs and crash through ice barriers, but it wasn't enough. The choppy waters of the sea grow closer and closer, enough so that Yogg-Saron could make out the individual waves. Tsa'Thannon landed first, flipping over and landing on one knee as though the ocean was solid ground. The shockwave was strong enough to send the water sailing back, leaving a short lived ring of calm.
Yogg-Saron touched down a full ten seconds later in bitter defeat, his landing releasing a similar shockwave. He turned towards Tsa'Thannon, frowning. "Well,
you got me," he admitted. On a whim he turned the ocean beneath her into a liquid again and she sunk, then came back up soaked.
He only had to wonder what her revenge would be for a moment before the water around him turned to a shark mouth and chopped his avatar in two.
In a flash he summoned another, this time an n'raqi avatar that towered over the tauren. "So," Tsa'Thannon said. "I think I'm going to finish up that puzzle I'm building."
"I'm going to…" Yogg-Saron spun a wheel in its mind. "… just drift around in an avatar." The faceless avatar floated up and collapsed into that of human-Sara, with the trademark glowing eyes. "See you later."
"Indeed," the other replied.
Then 'Sara' zipped away, floating on magic and hopelessness, heading north away from Tsa'Thannon's mountainous body, writhing and squirming on the horizon. The air was filled with silver streaks streaming towards it, souls that had been sacrificed to the other deity.
As Sara flew, she sighed, looking around in contentment. This was… nice. She enjoyed this. She drifted past a few black spires, atop which n'raqi generals – c'thrax – stood, bellowing orders. She turned the other way and saw a massive spire of black and gold amber. Extending her sensors inside she saw the mantid, working furiously on rebuilding their numbers, and as the eggs hatched the newborns were instantly sent into battle… against some mortal thralls. There was also a massive hive buried into the land, filled to the brim with silithid and qiraji, going about their business of slave mining.
"Hmm." Sara drifted straight down, passing through stone and sediment, through flowing veins of liquid gold and mercury. The pressure mounted and the temperature rose. Soon, Sara arrived, invisible, in a tunnel within the mantle of the world. The air shimmered with temperature in the hundreds of degrees, and the walls glowed a dull reddish-brown.
There were miners here, members of the Titans' world standing barefoot with solid iron sickles in their hands, kept alive and intact by way of magic. Not that it did anything to repel the sensation of burning itself. As they dug, finding golden veins and chunks of lead, a qiraji gladiator stood, one of his pincers holding a shimmering blue orb. He was protected entirely from the heat.
Sara allowed herself to become visible, exuding an eldritch aura that left no doubt as to her identity. "I feel," she said in Common, and it was so rare for her to use that language that the novelty struck her in the chest. "… that you all may be getting used to this heat." They shivered but didn't dare look her way, didn't dare stop their work. "Time for a change." She twisted a hand and the glowing heat instantly vanished.
Liquid nitrogen appeared from nothingness and flooded the room, steaming and cracking the stone with far less intensity than it would otherwise. Screams of pain filled the air as various mortals were stabbed with flakes of stone. Darkness consumed the tunnel. In time, the liquid nitrogen would vaporize and the planet's heat would flow in. Until then, they wouldn't freeze and they wouldn't drown. Bleeding out however, or disappointing the qiraji and having him kill them, was still on the table.
Sara vanished again, leaving them to their fate. She ascended rapidly, floating through the air on a whim and a breeze, taking in the sights.
She could still hardly believe it. She'd actually done it. Hardly a year ago, her greatest ambition was to be an Archmage, to spend her remaining sixty or so years of life holed up in a room doing research. And look at her now! The God of Death, co-ruler of an entire planet. All powerful. All seeing – that was C'Thun's title – and immortal. All her prior ambitions seemed so… fleeting. Like jokes.
She had to admit though… she was a little worried about the future. Not in the way of her life and limb and freedom but still. It was just her and Tsa'Thannon now. Leira, locked in a hallucination of being a hero, didn't count. Her previous incarnation's parents were out of the equation. And with just one Old God, however chaotic they were and however creative they were, eventually they were going to have to run out of options.
Eventually, they were going to be bored.
That was the problem with a life that extended to infinity. Eventually they'd see every possible combination of atoms there was to see, and then what? Just go to sleep in a lower plane for the rest of time? Keep rehashing the same old same old forever? Not just a long time, but truly forever? Not a million years. Not a trillion, or a googolplex, or any of the absurdly high numbers that mathematics could compute. Forever. Void, that boredom problem may manifest sooner rather than later…
Bah, that was future Yogg-Saron's problem.
Standing in the middle of the air, she moved her arms in circular patterns. Fireballs, icicles, shadow bolts and more appeared, rotating closer to her. They spun around and she extended her hands, enlarging their orbits. Then she cupped both hands together, world-shaking violet magic pooling within.
The magic faded and suddenly Sara's avatar was yanked over to its true body. There was one feature left over from Northrend. A mountain, incorporated into the tip of its throne. On it were, just as it had left them, the four Aspects, impaled through the chest and trapped in various, shifting nightmare scenarios. Sara flew over to Alexstrasza and opened her mouth.
The former Dragonqueen twitched in agony as the essence of her soul was torn off, white strands and streamers flowing from her scales and into Sara's mouth. Even though it was just a projection made of magic, she still shivered in ecstasy. She drained off of Nozdormu, Kalecgos and Ysera as well, taking more and more. It was like cotton candy, sweet and fluffy. It was like beef stew, savory and thick. It was everything she could have ever wanted and more, so she drained power from the magical Hearts until the Aspects died, then she brought them back and continued to feast like the glutton she could afford being. Eventually, the god had her fill and left them be.
Floating just aside the mountain was an orb of swarming wasps. Sara snapped her fingers. Now it was an orb of dense, searing smoke. The occupant wasn't visible, but the orb did fluctuate as Wrathion struggled within. He thought he was 'free' of the Old Gods? That having a little Titan tech waved over him as an egg would make him untouchable?
Hilarious. She ground her teeth – and her true body its many fangs – in anger just thinking about it, and sent another spike of searing pain to the black drake trapped within the sphere.
No. Calm. There was no need to be angry. Everything was right. Everything was as it should be. Maybe it'd pay a visit to some dragons worth keeping around. She soared away from the Aspects at supersonic speeds, busting through clouds and tearing through wind currents. It took a few laps around the globe, but she found where the new Dragonfall Temple had drifted.
Dragonfall Temple was an open and unashamed mockery of Wyrmrest. It clung to the underside of a floating boulder, upside down so that the Dragonking's chamber was on the lowest floor. The metal was, instead of silver and bronze, putrid black snapsteel and dark saronite. Parts of it had also been corrupted into flesh by Tsa'Thannon, covered in glowing yellow eyes. Dark blue forms flew around the island as it drifted in the breeze, suspended high above the clouds.
Sara hovered into the lowest room, where Revalion sat on his haunches at the inverted dome forming the 'floor'. Pillars of betentacled flesh surrounded them. Around the dragon's hind legs were spires of black stone, shooting up around him and forming a throne. Shackled to it was one female dragon of each Flight save for Bronze. There was even a fellow Twilight; Oediona, Revalion's challenger. They'd taken the liberty of reviving her and uncorrupting her mind. There were some other dragons around, twilight drakes and twilight dragonspawn but none of them were of any importance. Some meeting with Revalion or other. Whatever.
"Well, well, well," she said, floating in on Revalion. The dragons all gasped and fell into bows, trembling in fear of invoking Yogg-Saron's wrath. The Twilight Aspect was no exception. Quietly, Sara nodded to herself. Good, good. They knew their place. "Revalion, up." In a flash, the twilights which had been meeting with the Aspect about some hidden mortal camp or other were teleported randomly
around the globe.
Revalion raised his head. "Yes, O' Great One?" he asked quietly.
"First off, we didn't give you this temple so you could lounge about it all the time, nor did we give you power surpassing a Titan Aspect's just so you could use it to look scary and rape your consorts. Get out there, start maiming, or helping, or whatever whim takes hold. Show your lessers exactly what you think of them."
He trembled. "Understood, master. Get outside Dragonfall, exercise my power on the lesser beings."
"Exactly." She stepped closer, warping space so that his shackled consorts were far away, enlarging her avatar so that she towered over the dragon.
Then, after a moment's thought, she extended her hand, stripped his magical resistance, and blasted Revalion with shadow energy. Black lightning crackled around him and he instantly died. Then, just as quickly, he was alive and hyperventilating. Then he died again, and came back. And again, and again, and again, quicker and quicker until the cracks of her magic following each other sounded like a steady hum.
Eventually she tired of that and let the Aspect live, shrinking herself back to normal. "Oh, and what was it those drakes were telling you about?" she asked the panting, heaving dragon.
He threw up, and she turned the vomit to… hmm, red wine as it came out, coating the floor. "My patience is very limited," she warned, idly slamming his Blue slave into the pillars repeatedly.
"A hidden camp," he stammered. "Of mortals, trying to resist you. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to imply your worships were unaware of them – "
She cut him off, saying, "Correct, we are aware of them. Continue." She changed the red wine into fire ants and let go of the Blue dragon.