by Milton Garby
He eyed the skittering insects warily, but didn't dare breathe twilight flame on them in Sara's presence. Not that she'd have minded. " – but my Skyterrors were reporting that they're preparing a raid on a qiraji mine to free the slaves and we were planning on stopping them, master."
Now that Sara was unaware of. She casually changed her avatar into that of a dwarven man. "Is that so?" he asked. "Well, ignore it. I'll go deal with it. I've been meaning to check up on them anyway." Far off, another part of its consciousness finished strangling an unlucky gnome to death with its tentacles. It debated reviving him, but instead just ate the soul and sent the body to the bottom of the sea.
"Understood, my lord," Revalion said, bowing lowly.
"Excellent. Carry on." Suddenly his eyes were empty caverns, ringed with gaping fangs that dripped with some unknowable fluid. "Don't forget what I told you here today," he intoned lowly before shattering the avatar with the sound of forks on glass.
Davren Firestorm
Their camp was filled with the muted hum of people going back and forth, stockpiling and checking. The fluorescent rocks providing their cave light shimmered on the walls, bathing them in scarlet light. In the middle of it their leader, the forsaken man Torrow Villes, was busy coordinating the last of their preparations. Davren watched from the sidelines.
"Sixty-two holy amulets?" the undead asked warily.
"Sixty -four, sir!" the kaldorei woman corrected, handing over a box. "Exactly as you requested."
"Excellent," Torrow said, sending her off and handing the box to one of his subordinates. He turned to someone else, a troll mage. "Ration conjuration?"
"A little behind, mon," the other man said with a frown. "Ley lines shifted away this mornin'."
Torrow cursed quietly. "Alright, then try to catch up, at all costs. We'll be having a lot of visitors." He turned to a pandaren woman. "Mindwipe pills ready?"
She held up a filthy glass box, within which were over a dozen small, vibrating orbs of arcane magic. "All set, sir."
"Wonderful." Now Torrow turned to him, yellow eyes piercing through his soul. "Davren, is your team ready to move?"
He nodded grimly. "As ready as we'll ever be." Davren couldn't help a shiver going down his spine. This was incredibly dangerous... but it had to be done. They couldn't keep squatting in this hole forever.
"Excellent. Gather them here, it's time to begin."
Davren nodded and walked away from Torrow. He pushed through their camp, slipping between passing lines of people until he reached the far side of their cave. His team was no more than half a dozen strong, including himself. It included a human man, who'd been a farmer. A pandaren monk, even an ice troll woman, and many more. Their mission was as simple as it was dangerous. Infiltrate a qiraji compound and rescue the slaves within.
"Torrow says it's time," he announced to them where they sat in a huddle, eating their conjured rations. They were already geared up, which was not saying much. There were no tailors anymore, no supplies of thread and wool. All the clothing and equipment they had was what they'd had before the Rise of the Old Gods. Months into their reign, they had little more than rags and battered armor, the heaviest of which was chain mail. Meanwhile their enemies had the full power of not one, but two eldritch deities behind them. They weren't going to win any fights anytime soon. "He's got the supplies all set up for us at the east, let's go!"
The atmosphere was heavy and tense as the six of them geared up. Mindwipe pellets in case they got captured by the enemy. Whatever enchanted clothing they could find. Spiritual ankhs and holy candles. Rations, all blessed by the Holy Light. They strapped everything onto their backs in large, brown leather backpacks. Their portal expert - the ice troll woman, Karika - went over the coordinates for their camp's anchor one last time. It was a tricky one, because it kept moving as their little bubble of shelter was jostled around the globe.
Within an hour, it was all set. They huddled together, gnomish cloaking generators distributed among them. "We ready?" Davren asked. His five subordinates nodded. "Alright, then let's move. We all know what to do. Run in, get them, portal out. Easy as that." He brought his hands together and began to fashion a Mass Teleport. Arcane light pooled in his hands and filled the air with ozone. Around them, the remaining four dozen of their group knelt and offered them their last prayers. Then the spell in his hands took form, and the six of them were yanked upwards, through stone and dirt and filth, to the surface of Azeroth.
He had no idea what to expect. The landscape kept changing. For all they knew, they'd arrive at the bottom of the ocean. But they needed to rescue someone, anyone. It wasn't a trip of pure altruism. Those who had been taken in by the Old Gods' servants could possibly know their weakness. They were desperate, they'd take anything!
But Davren wasn't getting his hopes up.
He braced himself as he reappeared... but nothing could have prepared him for the furnace blast of heat. His eyes were treated to what Azeroth had become, and he couldn't keep his jaw from dropping. The sky was pitch black, and the stars were a chaotic rainbow of colors. The White Lady and Blue Child seemed... larger than he remembered. Clouds covered the sky like a transparent quilt, the color of dried blood. The ground beneath their feet was black obsidian, threatening to crack like glass beneath their shoes. Davren took a look around and his heart sank lower still.
They stood on an island of black stone, covered in strange, bright yellow growths the size of a house that looked almost fungal. Around their island the dark ocean rushed like a waterfall of oil, spraying them with scalding freshwater. And connected to their island was an enormous construct. It was black and dark green metal, shaped like a pyramid with its top sliced off and replaced with towering spires. From so far away, he could see enormous insectoid creatures standing on top, their claws raised to the bloody sky in praise.
Silently, Davren gestured to his comrades and pointed towards it. They nodded and, crouched low to the ground as if they weren't invisible to anyone outside their group, they crept forward.
From one side of the pyramid, a colossal chain came out. The construct floated in the searing ocean, seemingly heedless of the rushing water. The chain secured it to their island, and it was so enormous it could easily fit all six of them with room to spare. So, obviously, they were going to climb it.
They got in line and, step by step, climbed up the chain. Its green, twisting metal hurt to look at for long, and the constant spray of the now-freezing saltwater stung Davren's eyes. On the horizon, he saw an approaching wall of pitch black clouds crackling with nonstop lightning, filling the tepid air with ozone even from so far away. He gulped, then nearly fell off when the earth quaked. A glance behind him showed a mountain raising up from the ocean at a jawdropping rate. Stone and sand flowed upwards like water in reverse. The mountain punctured through the skies.
He shook his head and gestured for everyone else to move forward. "We can't stop for anything," he mouthed. "Keep going."
Not soon enough, they reached the end of the chain and were deposited at the very top of the construction. It vibrated under his feet as it continued to endure the waves... then suddenly fell silent as the ocean stopped moving. In its place, a gale wind picked up and nearly blew him off his feet with gusts of scorching, dry air that reeked of mold and death, so putrid he nearly threw up. But they were on top, with qiraji and mantid chanting filthy, unknowable words around him.
He found a way down, a steep ramp that lead into a hole in the earth. Silent as the grave, they approached it and slid down the black metal that - as Alenn found out - burned to the touch no matter the temperature. Good thing they had shoes.
Inside, it was nearly too dark to see. The only light came from glowing yellow sacks on the walls, which he dared not look closely at. His heart hammered in his chest as the wind continued to howl outside. The tainted metal beneath his feet seemed to squirm hungrily, eager for his leather shoes to wear away so it could get at his tender flesh. The qiraji patroll
ed the halls. Eerily humanoid battleguards, towering gladiators, and at one point he even saw a prophet, dressed in robes and giving a sermon to a crowd of bowing battleguards and mantid. In its magic were suspended various prisoners. He didn't want to look any closer.
Screams echoed through the halls as they went deeper and deeper. As they searched for anyone they could free, they passed by several open rooms in which they saw... by the Sun, such horrible things. A mantid, kneeling over the body of a tauren man that was peeled open. The bull was still alive and frozen in place. Holding pens where people lay in squalor, starved to twigs and twitching as they laid, nearly naked, on the black metal. Sacrifices slowly suffocating, held not at their necks but at their souls by towering faceless ones. He saw other things too, each worse than the last. The Old Gods were evidently as creative as they were cruel.
Davren's blood ran cold in his veins. The lump in his throat was far too large to swallow. They went deeper and deeper, the stench and heat and all around awfulness lingering wherever they tried to go. They just needed some people they could break out. Just a few. Then this would all be worth it.
Karika ran in front of him and held up her hands. He stopped, and so did the other four. She pointed to his left, and he followed her finger. His gaze fell upon another ramp, going deep into the earth. It was worth a shot.
He took the lead and led them into it, plunging further down. The black metal continued wrapping around them, occasionally punctured by a luminous sack or a glowing crystal that gave him a killer headache just being around, nevermind looking at. The ramp came to another cell, but this one was something they could work with. For starters there wasn't any guard, and the reason for that was evident. All the prisoners, malnourished to the extreme, were bound in the black metal. Shackles around their wrists, ankles, necks, leading to chains that hooked into the walls. Limbs spread so tight he thought they'd pop off and by the Light it gets worse the more I look stop looking stop looking!
"Slow and steady," he mouthed. "Be patient, don't mess this up."
Urven, the local draenei shaman, put a hand on his shoulder. "We can't break the chains without making a lot of noise," he mouthed.
Davren nodded. "Then we'll teleport them out of the chains. Karika, can you set up the portal? I'll get them out. First, everyone get to someone and get ready to extend the invisibility." There were eight prisoners here. A bit more than he'd expected to find, but nothing they couldn't handle. There was a human man, with dirtied blonde hair and muted blue eyes, staring into the distance. A human woman, with brown hair and brown eyes and a permanent scowl affixed to her tortured features. A goblin, an orc, even a tuskarr...
He came next to the human man, who kept staring vacantly, twitching slightly as the metal bands burned his soul. He raised three fingers, counted down to two, one, zero!
Davren's fingers tapped the engineering mechanism wrapped around his waist. With six muted flashes of arcane light, the prisoners became invisible and, as such, able to see them.
They screamed. Or at least they tried, but no sound came of their vocal cords as they jolted weakly within their shackles. Davren approached the human man and held a finger to his lips. "Shh," he whispered as quietly as possible, glancing over his shoulders to check for guards. "Shh. We're getting you out of here. We've got a portal set up. I need to teleport you out of those chains first." Davren held up his hands and began to pool arcane light. "Hold still."
Anxiety tingled throughout his body. They were so close, but this was by far the most touch-and-go part of the mission. The part where they had the greatest chance of being exposed. Breathing was shallow and nerves were tense as, one by one, Davren teleported the prisoners out of their shackles, where his team would do whatever they could to get them off the burning floor. The human man started sobbing. The brown haired woman just silently glared at everyone. The goblin started shaking violently for a few terrifying seconds. Davren tried not to look too closely at their bodies, at the bony ribs and mutilated scars...
For what must've been the hundredth time, he nearly threw up.
Finally, the last of the prisoners was free. "Karika," he mouthed, picking up the human woman in his arms like a newborn. Sun, she was so light... "Get us out of here!"
The troll nodded and brought her hands together to start preparing her spell. They gathered around her, holding their breaths. Could it be? Were they actually about to pull this off?
A gaping wound opened in the fabric of reality. The bright blue portal was a welcome sight in the dark and dreary caverns, even if he couldn't see where it was leading. That was normal ever since the Old Gods broke out. One by one they filed in, with Davren entering last, the woman trembling weakly in his arms and trying to claw his skin. He walked through the portal and was flung through the Nether. The arcane winds jostled around him, threatening to toss him and his cargo into the void between worlds, but then his vision cleared and he was back in camp, safe.
Holy shit. They actually did it.
What came next was a blur. Healers crowded in around them, taking the former prisoners out of their arms. There was food and water provided, medical attention, ragged screams, healing magic, and an incredible amount of sobbing all around. Poor things. He couldn't imagine what they went through, nor did he want to. Eventually, Davren retired to his bed, which was not much more than a square of the ground cleared away for him to sleep on. It was just rocks, but even so he fell fast asleep.
His nightmares woke him up no less than five times that 'night'.
The next day went by as most of them had, except with the addition of eight traumatized prisoners. The woman he'd rescued kept staring at him, too. Beyond that, it was business as usual. Help conjure food and water maintain the air and dispose of waste, pray to the Light for shelter and watch as the shamans pray to the elementals to keep them safe. Talk to people, tell stories, play games, and try to keep boredom at bay. Except now also contribute his meager medical knowledge, sit idly by as their priests did their best to help with the mental trauma. No information yet about any Old God weaknesses, but they had to be patient.
It was excruciatingly slow going.
A week later, it was time for lunch. All sixty-two of them gathered in the center of the stony pocket, bathing in dim red light. The meal was conjured water in leather flasks and conjured biscuits that had all the nutritional value they needed, which also meant they tasted like paper. But while Devran was used to choking it down, the former prisoners - Tamusk, Sarah, Prisleon, Jameson, and so forth - devoured it like it was the best food they'd had in months. Probably was, poor bastards.
At least they were doing better. They stopped jumping at every shadow, stopped randomly screaming and twitching. Davren scanned the group, his breathing slow and steady. Then, someone laughed.
Sarah's eyes all at once glowed brilliant orange. She gasped and was hoisted into the air, clutching at her throat and frozen as if time had stopped. So did Tamusk, Prisleon, every one of the prisoners... except Jameson, the human man he'd freed first.
Everyone gasped in panic and backed away as Jameson laughed. His half-starved body filled out. His rags of clothing became ornate brown robes, and the whites of his eyes turned orange, his iris and pupil melting into a brown disk. He floated into the air, looking down at them.
Davren's heart froze.
"Did you really think," Jameson began. "That you were hiding from us? That we somehow didn't know?"
No. No, no no no. He didn't want to be taken. He didn't want to be subjected to whatever the prisoners had been.
'Jameson' continued speaking, his words impossible to drown out and ignore. "I suppose I have to give you some credit. I'd never have expected you to do something quite this daring." He rubbed his hands together. "Unpredictable. Unforeseeable. I love it! But hey! Just make an avatar, some retroactive memory alteration, and nobody's the wiser." He glowered. "You've some nerve trying to take my belongings from me, you know. Especially to try and find a way to... what? Defeat
us? Not possible, unless you have a Titan army just lying around. But..." He shrugged. "I, Yogg-Saron, am in a good mood. You've really surprised me, and I can't wait to see what you'll cook up next. So I'll let you off with a warning." Davren's jaw dropped. Yogg-Saron. That human was an actual Old God taking mortal form. They'd drawn the attention of the Fiend of a Thousand Faces.
Then, with a clap of thunder, the other mortals dropped to the ground and Jameson was gone.
Dead silence.
Then, the Old God avatar returned with a shadow nova, looking... tired. "Changed my mind." His voice turned to ice, and brilliant green magic wrapped around his hands. "Goodbye."
Necrotic power surged forth and wrapped around Davren. He conjured a mana shield, but it shattered instantly. The energy wrapped around him and he gasped in pain. Then he was... he was...
He wasn't.
Yogg-Saron
It rubbed a crusher tentacle against its true head, growling lowly. Ugh. This was stupid. It should've kept them around. Just because it could act on its every impulse didn't mean it had to. Now their souls were destroyed, gone forever. They wouldn't be coming back.
Maybe it could make a few mortals to take their place. Throw them in a hole in the ground, give them false memories, have them do what they would. But then it would know what they'd do, wouldn't it? It'd be able to predict their decisions and conflicts and... it was seriously thinking about creating mortals just for them to be free of it.
Stupid. All of it.
Yogg-Saron shook those thoughts off. Who cared? There were plenty of other things left to surprise it besides a few dust motes that thought their 'spirit' and 'indomitable will' would avail them. Puzzles by Tsa'Thannon. Sermons by the qiraji and mantid, watchgates to distant stars and planets, the list went on. For the time being, Yogg-Saron's tendrils began to wave around in the air, summoning vast arcane magic. After a moment, there was a phenomenal CRACK as Yogg-Saron vanished from Azeroth and air began rushing in to fill the void it left behind.