Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  Yogg-Saron didn't roar.

  It screamed.

  Golden energy careened through space, briefly adding its glow to that of the Sun. The energy wasn't... exactly the Holy Light but by the void it's a damn good approximation! Exorcisms and judgements, consecrated space, holy wrath and bolts, smites, holy fire and repentance and more engulfed Yogg-Saron's being. Every single one of its jaws locked up and every last one of its tentacles went rigid as the burning, burning magic ripped across its being and scarred its soul.

  No. No, it had to focus. It still had to win this battle! If it didn't, Tsa'Thannon would kill it. It might even find Leira's pocket dimension and then... no.

  The battle bitterly waged on. Tsa'Thannon screamed and judged and rambled as Yogg-Saron continued its maddening work, slowly but surely wearing it down. But just as Tsa'Thannon could not repair its sanity fast enough, now Yogg-Saron could not outheal Tsa'Thannon's enormous magical output. It teleported Yogg-Saron back and forth forcefully into various attacks, too fast to possibly be able to dodge them, and it was all Yogg-Saron could do to avoid being sent into the heart of the Sun. Lances of plasma, augmented with dark power, sliced at its limbs and even tore some of the smaller tentacles off, forcing it to regenerate them. Tsa'Thannon's aura did not abate either, repeatedly sending out explosions of the various schools of magic. To make it worse, it always teleported right next to Yogg-Saron to release a pulse, then back to a safer distance once done.

  'You're the one who freed me! You're the one who did everything right and saved me! And now you're trying to kill me all of a sudden? What did I do? WHAT DID I DO?!'

  But Yogg-Saron wasn't giving up either. Sheets of its shadowy barrier danced along its skin, too fast and unpredictable to dispel. The lunatic skulls remained everywhere, burning into Tsa'Thannon's vision despite the overpowering light of the nearby star. Whenever it could, it latched on to Tsa'Thannon and channeled the Lunatic Gaze spell directly, all while countering its more dangerous spells, healing itself from the literal hurricane of magical projectiles, and retaliating with more sanity-draining magic.

  But everything hurt. Everything hurt so much. Yogg-Saron's body was blackened and burned, and one of its eight arms had gone completely numb. Plates of armor were cracked, and gas sacks were ruptured. Tsa'Thannon's magic was just as terrible as it remembered. It was just a race against time to see who would succumb first, and Yogg-Saron was determined to hold out.

  Then Tsa'Thannon threw it into the Sun.

  The magical force it summoned didn't even allow it to teleport out. All Yogg-Saron could do was watch the colossal orb of plasma grow larger and larger as its gravity helped drag it in. Its main head winced, but it conjured the most powerful cooling enchantment it could and plunged into the Sun.

  It... wasn't that bad, surprisingly enough. Being made of gas the Sun didn't have a perfectly defined surface, but Yogg-Saron was large enough that it resembled falling into the ocean. Except it was so diffuse. Light. Not at all like water. And while the heat was abundant and plentiful, with its cooling enchantments it didn't burn much more than lava. It pumped its seven remaining tentacles to stay 'afloat' beneath the Sun's surface and waited for Tsa'Thannon's magic to run out. Its aura continued to release pulses, which in turn sent ripples through the Sun's gaseous surface.

  ... the magic was gone! Yogg-Saron teleported out of the Sun and released its cooling spell. But the moment it was done teleporting, agonizing pain lanced through its body as Tsa'Thannon, who'd been waiting right where Yogg-Saron had arrived, ran it through with its spines. Yogg-Saron roared, grabbing Tsa'Thannon with its tentacles and throwing the other deity off just in time to mitigate a fiery pulse. Tsa'Thannon flipped about in the vacuum several times before suddenly stabilizing itself. Yogg-Saron saw the many eye tentacles staring in all directions, blinking and watering at the sight of the many lunatic skulls.

  'We have everything,' it whispered, not even moving to attack. 'And you're... oh I see! You're willing to throw it all away so you can go play pretend as a mortal! Yogg-Saron would never do that, you're just some THING in my friend's body!' it desperately accused, renewing its magical assault. Projectiles pounded Yogg-Saron from all directions, forcing it to twist and turn in ways even an omnipotent invertebrate like itself had difficulty. Whenever it could it struck at Tsa'Thannon directly, but the aura was pulsing faster and faster - which meant less time between the Holy blasts - and while Tsa'Thannon's attacks were getting stronger a lot of them were starting to miss now, flying past Yogg-Saron and into the abyss.

  Suddenly, Yogg-Saron was teleported near a loop of plasma. The Sun's gravity let up without it having to do anything, rendering it immobile. Already, eight portals surrounded it in all directions and, before it had even a chance to move, opened and released enormous streams of burning plasma onto Yogg-Saron. It roared and covered itself in empowering shadows, but then the burning ended as it was teleported -

  - right next to Tsa'Thannon, and a burst of frost magic erupted from it. Combined with the terrible heat Yogg-Saron had been subjected to moments before, quite a few of its armor plates - including the ones on its heads - shattered. Yogg-Saron started to heal it, but there were also its many cuts, bleeding black blood that instantly vaporized in the heat of the Sun. There were magical burns, holy scars, its head buzzed and its maws were still.

  - suddenly it was beneath Tsa'Thannon, who brought its five arms together and carved through Yogg-Saron with another shadow beam. Yogg-Saron swam away once the damage was done, coating itself in healing magic.

  'I... I...' Tsa'Thannon stammered, spinning around in place to look at the lunatic skulls. It dispelled some of them, but Yogg-Saron simply replaced them. 'I don't want to be alone,' it moaned. 'Uldunol was so quiet and still. I had none of you to interact with. I don't want to lose you. Just stop this! Please!'

  Its hearts clenched in sympathy, but it didn't stop. Instead, Yogg-Saron took the opportunity to warp over onto Tsa'Thannon and once again wrap the smaller deity tightly in its tentacles. A surge of arcane magic from it nearly blew it right off, but it held on tightly. The aura. Yogg-Saron had to dispel the aura. It reached its magic into Tsa'Thannon as it bucked and heaved against Yogg-Saron, trying to teleport to safety among all manner of attacks. It found the aura easily and went to work on it. It wasn't as difficult to figure out as the reflection shield had been. Soon, Tsa'Thannon's pulsing aura was dismantled.

  'No! No!' it screamed, renewing its assault. But Yogg-Saron held it tightly and continued to batter it with every madness inducing spell it had in its arsenal with as much power as it could possibly muster. Magic that could snap the wills of an entire species in an instant. Power that could shatter worlds in a minute. Tsa'Thannon's mental lines were ruined, tangled and knotted, but it was still fighting to repair the damage and struggling to bring Yogg-Saron down. Using magic was getting harder, but it was not letting up. Yogg-Saron was about to break through, it knew it! It just had to hold on a little longer...

  'Stop it!' Tsa'Thannon shrieked, contorting about at incredible speeds, unable to so much as stab Yogg-Saron with its spines. 'Stop it, STOP IT!' Arcane light crackled all along Tsa'Thannon's tentacles. Around the two of them, portals opened up into the Sun. At first there were four, but then there were eight, then twelve. They formed four 'lines' that traced paths along an invisible sphere around the two of them, and then they unleashed their plasma.

  Yogg-Saron raised its defenses in time, but this was plasma from the Sun's core. It moved at relativistic speeds and was so hot it actually glowed in the gamma spectrum so as to make it completely invisible to mortals. Yogg-Saron grunted as the four trails of core plasma burned into it, carving through its shadowy barrier and burning lines into both it and Tsa'Thannon's bodies. The moment one of the portals released its burst of plasma it closed and Tsa'Thannon opened another so the four trails continued to snake around them, spewing superheated plasma into the vacuum as Tsa'Thannon's suicidal attack went on and on, carving white-hot lines onto the
ir bodies.

  It just couldn't keep up with this sort of punishment, especially not with the beating it had endured already. Gouts of plasma poured upon its tendrils and its true head, flooding the insides of its neck and scorching its internal organs. But it didn't give up. It kept blasting Tsa'Thannon with purple lightning bolts by the thousands, maladies like rain, and forced it to watch every lunatic skull and every subatomic particle of Yogg-Saron's own body as it channeled its own aura. It used its superior strength to twist them around in the void, forcing Tsa'Thannon's pearl-like head into its own streams of plasma before it could redirect them. So it went on for... what could have easily been hours.

  And then... the portals started slowing down. The four steadily tracing beams became rapid-fire blasts, then just four streams of plasma at a time. Then three. Then two, then one. And finally, Tsa'Thannon's onslaught stopped entirely.

  It hung in Yogg-Saron's grip, shuddering and whispering to itself, even projecting an awful sound that might have been sobbing. It took advantage of the opportunity, closing its tendrils around Tsa'Thannon's head to batter it with everything its muscles could manage. Brilliant purple light engulfed Tsa'Thannon inside and out as Yogg-Saron tried to extinguish its life. It saw the deity's soul in its body, a colossal purple cloud linked to a mangled mind, twitching and resisting feebly. Yogg-Saron wondered if it even understood what was happening anymore.

  Slowly, Tsa'Thannon's hearts slowed down. Its black blood stopped flowing. The chemical impulses in its brain died down and its many fanged mouths drifted weakly. Yogg-Saron swam away from the smaller Old God, releasing more and more of its most powerful spells. One by one, it dispelled its own sphere of lunatic skulls. Tsa'Thannon twitched once and twice. An observer on Azeroth with a sufficiently advanced telescope might have seen them, planet-sized specks shadowed by the burning Sun but unaffected by its gravity. One of them was immobile, and the other sluggish. Yogg-Saron healed itself as it continued its onslaught, staring at Tsa'Thannon's body in fear of it renewing its assault. But nothing came.

  Eventually, it relaxed its magic and swam closer, poking and prodding Tsa'Thannon even as its empowering shadows finished healing it with impunity. Without an Old God assaulting it, Yogg-Saron's body and mana replenished themselves very quickly. The other deity did nothing.

  Tsa'Thannon, Endless Despair, the God of Darkness, was dead.

  Sickly green necrotic energy lit up the tips of each of Yogg-Saron's tentacles. It barely even realized what it was doing. Everything felt surreal. Had it... actually just done this? Killed another deity? The most powerful Old God? Its friend? It hadn't been a pleasant death either. It had been horrible, painful, as Tsa'Thannon lost its grip on reality and was forcibly deprived of its will to fight.

  The death magic shrouded Tsa'Thannon's body. From its gray body, the god's soul was drawn forth by Yogg-Saron's magic and brought to its body. The shifting, squirming dark violet soul bashed repeatedly into its emerald cocoon. It released shadow bolts and other spells, but there was nothing it could do. Yogg-Saron was the God of Death, so now Tsa'Thannon was utterly under its power. The magical prison flared, burning Tsa'Thannon and draining its magic until even the soul was completely pacified.

  Yogg-Saron inspected it, barely moving. This was all moving too fast. It hadn't decided what to do when it got to this point. There were so many things it could do. Leira would want it to destroy the soul. Erase Tsa'Thannon from existence so it could never hurt anyone ever again, then let the Sun's gravity claim the body and purify it with flame. It could return it to its body, it could reshape its thoughts. It was a god, it could do anything!

  The soul swirled within its magic, undulating back and forth. For a literal week, Yogg-Saron floated in the void, turning over its options, what it wanted to do, what it should do, what would pay off for it in the long run. What it would do to Azeroth. How much it would return the world to how it was. The n'raqi had to go, of course. The qiraji and mantid would have their reproduction rates cut down to mortal levels and the elementals would be banished to their planes. Five new Aspects had to be chosen, mortals had to be liberated... how much of their trauma would it relieve? Maybe bring back the nerubians?

  But more immediate was what to do with its fellow god. Yogg-Saron sighed into the void, and made its decision.

  Leira

  She was in the middle of battle, dueling a felguard one-on-one, and then!

  She was in the air. She gasped and fell, dropping to her hands and knees. The air was humid and warm, smelling like something she did not dare grace with a description. It nearly made her retch, the Holy Light within her soul recoiling at the presence of something... horrible.

  Leira stood, looking herself over. She was in... regular clothes? A purple shirt and purple pants, with a pair of shoes designed for hooves next to her. They weren't any clothes she owned, but it seemed to be perfectly sized for her and inexplicably comfortable despite the heat. What happened? She'd just been in her armor, leading the charge against the... demons...

  Wait no, that wasn't right. That was... that was all a dream! Sara had made her think it was real! The cut on her forehead was gone. But she wasn't atrophied either. Had it been such a short amount of time? Had Sara kept her body healthy? What was going on?

  Then her gut dropped. She'd been in the dream. And now... she wasn't.

  Leira was on a beach. Before her the land stretched away, covered in gently swaying grass. To her sides, waves lapped at steep, rocky cliffs that had not the slightest bit of sand on them. Gulping, she turned around and instantly regretted it.

  There, in all its horror, was the tip of Yogg-Saron's body. A massive brownish-greenish body. She couldn't even see the entire thing. All she could see was one of its tendrils, lying in the ocean and stretching off into the distance, covered in smaller tentacles which were covered in still smaller tentacles and so forth, writhing through the air. Its millions of horrible, gibbering mouths stretched and snapped at the air. There was so much motion it was impossible for her to truly take it all in. Leira's mouth opened in terror. What was it doing? Why had it brought her back? Scenarios raced through her head, each worse than the last. Had Sara finally grown tired of her?

  Then the tentacles began to cast magic. Green mist spread across its body, growing like mold from a hundred million spots until the entire Old God was shrouded in swirling energy. Leira backed up cautiously, as if she could protect herself by adding a few more yards between herself and the monster. The magic built higher and higher, roaring like a million storms as it reached its filthy crescendo...

  Yogg-Saron vanished. There was no flash of light or blast of noise. There wasn't even any air rushing in to fill the space it had just been, or water to even out the displaced oceans. It was simply... gone, as if had never been there.

  The red tint in the skies shimmered and started to change, sliding through yellow and green until it was a simple, ordinary blue sky, dotted with fluffy white clouds. The sun burned in the corner of Leira's eyes, and the White Lady was out early. A gentle breeze caressed her face, blowing away the stench of evil and madness to replace it with sea salt.

  Yogg-Saron had... left?

  Leira turned around and inspected the area around her. She hadn't noticed it earlier, but her armor and weapons were here too. There was also a leather sack so large she could fit dwarf inside. She approached it, opened its flap, and stared in. Her eyes bugged out. It was much larger on the inside, to the extent that if she could open it large enough, Leira could literally fit a house inside. The sack was stored with all manner of water and nonperishable food, potions and bedrolls, everything she could possibly need to live on her own for a long time.

  She got to work. She put on her armor, hoisted the sack onto her back, and sheathed her weapons. She didn't recognize any landmarks. She didn't recognize anything. But Leira did see some smoke pouring into the sky, off in the distance. Judging by the distance it'd be a week on hoof to get there, but with the magical bag she wasn't goi
ng to starve.

  This all felt like a dream. Futilely battling a god, the actual dream where the Alliance started to push back the demons, and now coming back to Azeroth only for Yogg-Saron to give her what she could only call a farewell gift, as if that could possibly make up for what she knew it had been doing while she slumbered. Leira didn't know what Azeroth was like. She didn't know how much had changed, how much had stayed the same, and how many of the changes had been reverted.

  But smoke meant civilization, and if Leira still meant anything to Sara she wouldn't have dropped her off at a hostile camp. In fact, they might need her help to recover from what the Old God of Death had subjected them to. Had her words eventually gotten through to it? Had Sara suffered a crisis of conscience? Either way, she had work to do. A Warrior of the Alliance's work was never done.

  Steeling her nerves, Leira walked into the new world.

  Derestrasz

  He sighed, curling up in his cave with a grumble. No, not comfortable. He continued tossing and turning, flicking his wings and scraping his tail-club on the ground. Eventually, Derestrasz ended up on his stomach, facing the exit of his home. It was dour and gray, drizzling rain onto the mountains. The sound was a soothing, gentle trickle that had never failed to lull him to sleep before the Lost Year had happened. But the Lost Year had happened, so Derestrasz just found himself staring out at the rain, letting some of it trickle into his cave for him to drink before it vanished into the depths of the earth. He didn't like sleeping so close to the exit, but he also didn't want to go deeper into the cave and be trapped.

  Derestrasz's stomach rumbled, prompting him to exhale sharply through his nostrils. He needed to eat. He needed to go outside and hunt the strange, but equally precious, lifeforms walking Azeroth. Slay them and offer a prayer of thanks to their spirit, then bring back the meat to his cave and feast like he hadn't feasted in ages. But the thought of going out there, of hurting something, of just getting up made his limbs feel like lead. He'd much rather stay there and tough out his hunger. He could eat later.