Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  Sara pulled down the first in a list of humans, just to have a control to reference against. She got one for each of the races of the Alliance and Horde, the various Dragonflights, races belonging to neutral factions, and then a list of 'other' magical signatures. Sara found a desk far in the corners where there was nobody else to distract her, sat down, and began perusing the books.

  Human magical signatures tended to be smoother, like a mountain slowly rising, then falling after the middle of the graph. It was more or less the same for the other members of the Alliance and Horde, which baffled Sara. Why was her magic so... incredibly far out? Maybe the reading process had screwed up?

  But it's the only thing that explains my magic, she thought to herself.

  Sara drummed her fingers together, staring at 'Pandaren Magical Signatures' intensely. The Pandaren signatures were slightly pushed to the left of the human signatures, and didn't go as high, among other slight differences that wouldn't add up to much in actual spell casting.

  She pondered. There was something with her magic. Sara didn't think her signature was completely unique, the odds of that were laughable. But if she could find something close to her magic, then she could presumably do her Archmage Thesis on that topic. She'd certainly have a head start, at least. But what was her magic?

  Neutral factions turned up nothing. Dryads and high elves had nothing in common with her, the former being almost the complete opposite of her magic. Dragonflights also turned up nothing. The closest she got was the three magical signatures from captured Twilight dragons, which were similar to her signature on two of the axes, but on the other two they instead resembled other Flights. Nothing useful there.

  Finally, Sara opened up the 'Miscellaneous Creature Magical Signature' book, flipping first to the table of contents. Troggs, kobolds, one single entry of a faceless, a lot of elementals, gnolls, and other such creatures. She stared at the table for a while, then rolled her eyes. Right, her magic would line up with them. Her reading had probably just gotten messed up, she'd pay the fee to get a second one. Still, since she was already there and wasn't doing anything...

  Troggs were not even close. The elementals had a passing resemblance in terms of the third axis's colors, but that was it. Kobolds were out of the question. Then Sara flipped the page and found the one entry of a faceless one that some crazy mage had gotten a reading from, and froze.

  Her eyes flicked left and right, between the faceless's signature and her own. She did math, comparing how close her numbers were to its. They were close. Far too close. Even without math, the faceless one's signature had the same rising and falling spike pattern hers did.

  Sara's face went pale and a cold pit settled in her stomach. With shaking hands, she reached over and closed the book, as if its cover was a mountain. With that done she leaned back in her seat and covered her face with her hands. All of a sudden she understood very well why her magical signature had been locked up like that, why she could perform mental magic so naturally, everything. She also understood what exactly she was going to have to do to get the power of being an Archmage.

  Her magic was almost identical to that of the Faceless.

  Sara

  After a few minutes of leaning back in the chair, she peeled her hands off her face and let out a long, drawn out groan.

  A faceless one. I have the magic of the faceless ones. Damn it.

  Now what?

  She stared at the books and papers and felt ill. How could it even be possible? Sure, it explained a lot of the... nuances of her powers, but how? Her parents weren't Twilight Cultists, she'd read their minds - Sorry Mom and Dad - and knew it wasn't the case. What in the world could give her the powers of the damnable Faceless?

  Calm down, she told herself. This doesn't change anything.

  Her plan was a remarkable success though, she couldn't argue. She hadn't gone extremely in depth with research yet, but she knew that the topic of the Old Gods was poorly researched for... obvious reasons. She could research them. She could find out more about them and, in doing so, find out more about her powers. But how? Moreover, how could she do it safely? The magic of the Old Gods was infamous for being unimaginably corruptive.

  But then why wasn't her magic corruptive? She wasn't corrupted. The animals she resurrected weren't corrupted. The people she read and changed weren't corrupted.

  Maybe she'd have to put deliberate, corruptive intent into it. The other possibility was that she, having the magic naturally, was immune to the corruption. That didn't make sense though, otherwise everyone else wouldn't be immune. Maybe it was both. It sounded like something worth researching.

  She grabbed a pencil from a nearby container - the library was filled with them - and copied down the faceless one's magical signature. She tucked that away into a pocket, then closed the books and put them back in their shelves. She grabbed the papers containing her own signature and stashed them away, then sat back down and sighed, thinking to herself.

  First things first, she needed to find something to research about the Old Gods. That'd be easy, no doubt, since there was nearly nothing known about them, however she'd need to be absurdly specific; this was her Archmage thesis after all. After that she would need to present it to the Archmagister Board and get approval for enough funding, and unless she cobbled together something she could do entirely on her own, unlikely, Sara would then have to go find volunteers to go investigating the nature of the Old Gods.

  The Archmages know about my magic, she realized.

  How could she have been so stupid? Of course her magical signature was confidential, she had the magic of the damned faceless. And the Archmages knew. Why hadn't they done anything with the information? Nobody fully knew what the faceless were capable of, so her wielding their magic without knowing what it was could do great harm...

  What if they have done something and I don't know it?! she thought, slowly working herself into a panic. What if they'd been expecting her to warp someone's mind to get her signature? What if - she looked around at everyone else using the library, the claustrophobic underground library - what if they had sent people to spy on her, or worse?!

  Calm down, Sara. Calm down. Get a grip!

  They had nothing they could do against her. They were unable to prove she'd done anything illegal, and if she made a good enough case, she could get funding for her research anyway, from outside sources if she had to. For certain, there would always be rich people she could suddenly befriend. That was a last resort though. She could do this. She would do this. She just had to be smart about it.

  First things first, she had to figure out what actually was known about the Old Gods so she wouldn't accidentally just tread old ground. She went to the shelves and began perusing for anything related to the topic of Old Gods. She found a history book on Azeroth's early history, which wouldn't contain too much in the way of magical knowledge, but better safe than sorry. There was a thin book detailing what was known about the faceless beneath Northrend, and another one listing effects of Old God corruption.

  She went back to her table with all three books and sat, opening the first one. She read through it, going over the archaeological research that had been found. The Mantid, Nerubians, and Qiraji all had a progenitor species in the extinct 'Aqir', who had survived the Ordering of Azeroth and were only defeated by the trolls, some six thousand years before the War of the Ancients. Nothing useful. There were also records of the fates befalling all known Old Gods, which also wasn't of use.

  The next book was far more useful, and in it were descriptions of powers displayed by the faceless. It was almost universally shadow magic - there were exceptions, such as General Vezax employing fire magic - that was described as being 'sticky'. Another feature that Sara's magic had recently started to display. Every spell she cast left a residue in the area affected, like fog, until dissipated. Though it hadn't always done so, so maybe her magic would become corruptive with time?

  The final book listed effects of the O
ld God's magic that had been noted. Everything from the forced evolution of the Aqir to the destruction of the failed World Tree in Northrend could be traced to them, and they'd even played a crucial role in the Shattering. Sara began making connections with what she'd learned about demons and fel magic in the past few years; Old God corruption seemed to do anything demonic corruption did, but much more pervasively. People had come back from being corrupted by demons, but Sara didn't think there was any record of the same happening with Old Gods.

  She flipped through the books and devoted as much of them to her incredibly memory as she could, then placed them back in their shelves, gathered her belongings, and booked it out of the too-far-underground library.

  Sara took a deep breath of the fresh air once she was outside, then half-ran back to her living area. Everywhere she looked, she was certain people were looking at her. They know, she thought. They have to know. It's so obvious. Faceless magic explains everything. They have to know, they have to have figured it out...

  Sara slammed the door behind her as she slipped into her apartment, gasping for breath. Okay, she was safe, nobody was coming for her, and if they were she could blast a hole through their chest. Everything was going to be fine.

  She went to her desk and pulled out a few pencils and sheets of paper, then went to writing down everything she had managed to memorize from the books. Her memory wasn't quite photographic, and while she could pick things up quickly it wasn't a guarantee she would remember it long, so she had to write down everything right away. The less chance there was of someone being suspicious about her reading books on the Old Gods, the better. It took a few hours for her to jot it all down and her wrist burned by the end, but she finished in a timely manner.

  There was a lot of time until exhaustion claimed her, so Sara spent the rest of the day brainstorming various research topics centered on the Old Gods. She wrote up a few drafts, then crumpled them up and tossed them over her back. Outside, the sun crashed under the horizon and stars speckled the sky, but she didn't stop working. It wasn't until long after midnight that Sara decided to stop writing, because she had work the next day. So she crawled into her bed and passed out, having dreams of tentacles bursting from the ground and dancing around her.

  A week passed, and then another.

  In that time Sara continued to create her research proposal, looked up how much funding she'd need, checked in on some of the upper class to mind control. She also got a few letters from her parents, mostly about the dreadfully dull gossip of Greenvale. But she didn't want to hurt their feelings, so in her return letters she pretended to care at least a little.

  It was on the second week after discovering her faceless magic that Sara finished her research proposal. She'd thought ahead and made an appointment to have her proposal looked at, so she finished stacking up the papers. She wouldn't actually stand in front of the board, she'd simply have to drop it off and then wait for them to do the rest.

  The abstract read about how the Old Gods had always menaced Azeroth and, until the final one was destroyed, perhaps always would. She also related to how it was discovered the destruction of all five Old Gods would annihilate all life on the planet, so the only logical conclusion was, before the Kingslayers found and destroyed the last of the five Old Gods, to find a way to reverse the spell they had cast on Azeroth.

  The stack of papers then went on to highlight a detailed description of her planned experiment, which involved taking the magical signature of the Old Gods, mechanisms to reverse engineer the spell they had cast, and a variety of other things. The total cost, including travel and provisions, was about a hundred thousand gold. Sara had about eighty gold to her name; her job didn't pay that well. If she wanted even to get the trip to Silithus and C'Thun payed for, she was going to need a lot of funding.

  But for the time being, all she could do was hand in her proposal to the Wizard Sanctum's mailbox and wait. She decided that, if she were to be idle for the next few days waiting for approval or denial, or people breaking into her home trying to kill her, she might as well let off some steam.

  Sara made her way out of the Mage Quarter and walked along the Canals. Stormwind was crowded at that time of the day, so she had to push past the throngs of people in order to get to the Trade District, and from there to the autumn colors of Old Town. The smell of aged wine and history drifted into her nose, and she exhaled sharply to clear her senses and headed towards the training grounds. The crowds thinned as she approached, while the number of armored guards standing at attention increased.

  The training grounds were open to the public, and the training dummies provided by the Academy weren't sufficient for Sara. They shattered too easily. These however, these were heavy-duty. The same brand the Kingslayers used. These training dummies could handle her wrath. Mostly.

  Entering the tall, white-brick building, Sara turned a few corridors and passed a few doors. From the doors the sound of clashing steel and wood resounded, but she kept going until she found one that seemed to be empty. Placing her hands against the heavy wooden doors, she pushed them in. Inside was a circular room of white stone, with singed banners of the Alliance's lion-head plastering the walls. All around her were dummies of wood and straw, holding a mock sword and shield.

  Once in the middle of the room, Sara reached behind her back and stretched her arms. Then she drew up her magic, and began.

  Right away, she brought a glowing-purple hand to her chest and thrust it out to the left. A surge of unrefined shadow magic washed outwards with cataclysmic force, scouring dust and germs from the stone and colliding with the training dummy like a battering ram. It bent backwards, but refixed itself quickly. In that time, Sara turned to her right and held out both hands, unleashing another unfocused blast. That one caught three of the dummies, blasting away their magically-reinforced straw and sending them spinning wildly.

  Sara tried to let her mind go blank as she kept unleashing her power. Boom! One of the training dummies snapped in half from a thin ray of magic. Boom! She sent dust flying from a blast that left a dummy headless. Huge amounts of magic coiled along her arms, turning sickly green and hurting her with its sheer magnitude. But as hard as she tried, her thoughts raced.

  A faceless one! She had the magic of eldritch abominations from before the Ordering of Azeroth!

  Boom! Each hand let out a blast, each of which left a dummy without its sword arm.

  And she hadn't even known it! For years, she'd been using some of the darkest magic known to the Alliance, throwing it around like Hallow's End candy!

  Boom! She brought both her arms together and raised them up over her head. Sara suddenly shot them outward, completely obliterating a dummy and leaving the adjacent ones half disintegrated.

  And she wasn't the only one who knew. She was trying to convince the Archmages, who knew what she could do, to let her get within arm's length of an Old God! It was never going to work! They were going to decline her - best case scenario - and then she'd be stuck as a Magister for the rest of her life, going nowhere!

  Sara curled over and, with a scream, stood and flung her arms out. The intensely bright green magic along her body flared outwards, turning into a violet shadow nova as it did and reducing the remaining training dummies to piles of straw.

  With that done, Sara fell to the ground and moaned in pain, clutching her burning limbs amidst swirling, clinging darkness. "Damn it," she whispered. She'd forgotten to bring a staff with her, so she'd overchanneled. It'd pass in a few minutes, and if she didn't repeatedly overchannel she wouldn't suffer the long term effects, but damn it it hurt!

  "Holy shit!" came an astonished whisper from behind her. Immediately Sara got to her feet and spun around, holding a magic-engulfed arm at the intruder. Maria immediately backed up and held up her hands in surrender. "Whoa whoa, easy there! I was just watching, honest!"

  "Ha!" came a little voice, prompting Sara to look down and to the right. "Sure ya were! Just watching, you were staring like a
fish outta water! Never seen magic before, mistress?" a little smoldering imp jeered.

  Sara immediately pointed a finger at it and zapped it with a thin ray of shadow magic. The demon yelped and phased into transparency, blowing a raspberry at her. "Keep your pet leashed, Maria," she scowled. "Now what were you doing here?"

  "Despite what Rulpit says I really was just watching. You've got a lot of magic you know that?" Maria stuck her head into the room and looked around, whistling. She waved a hand to try and blow away the sticky shadows in the room. "Wow, I do not envy the clean up team's jobs - whoa!"

  In that time Sara had pulled Maria in, closed the door, and then slammed her against the bricks with a tether of her faceless magic. It extended out from one of her palms in a single beam, then divided in two at Maria's neck to pin her to the wall. "You've got ten seconds to tell me what you were really doing here," she scowled, secretly flooding Maria's mind with magic in order to see whether or not she'd lie.

  "I saw you coming this way and I thought I'd catch up! I haven't seen you in a while so I was curious!" No lying. Sara let go of her magic and Maria brought a hand to her neck, massaging it. "Holy shit Sara, what is wrong with you?"

  Idea!

  Sara stumbled back, making a show of pinching her brow. "Sorry, sorry. I've been stressing out lately. Just submitted my research proposal for the Archmage title."

  Maria nodded. "Yeah well, try not to decapitate me, yeah?" She got off the wall and chuckled. "So, what're you researching?"

  Sara quirked a brow, looking at her sideways. "Why do you want to know?"

  "I'm just curious, I was just wondering what you'd go for."

  "Well, just between you and me, I've made the decision to research the Old Gods and their magic."

  Maria's eyes bugged out comically and her little imp raised an eyebrow. "Wait, what?! Sara, what in the world would drive you to do that?"

  "Well think about it!" she said. "All of the Old Gods that died in recent memory are because of the Kingslayers. C'Thun, Yogg-Saron, the remnants of Y'Shaarj, and N'Zoth. Tell me, what happens if they screw up? Like, there's one more Old God out there somewhere. What happens if they go to it, and get smacked down like flies, huh? It's a terrible idea to put all our eggs in one basket like that!"