Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  That was where any comparison to an octopus ended. Measuring from where one cottage-thick tentacle vanished beneath the land and the opposite side, C'Thun's head took up roughly three quarters of the space. It was as tall as it was wide, somewhat rounded. Between the places where its gigantic tentacles merged with its body were its mouths, sideways and slammed shut with the white fangs sticking into itself. All along its skin were burns and bruises, cuts surrounded by dry, black blood and arrow holes. Above each of the eight maws was an enormous purple eye, rolled back into its socket so as to hide any evidence of a pupil.

  And that was just the bottom half of its head. The top half was occupied with countless smaller, similarly dead eyes of which a good number had their lids closed over them and limp tendrils which, while not as gargantuan as the eight primaries, were three times Sara's height and ended in wickedly sharp points. To complete the image of the Old God, at the top of its head was a series of sandy spikes standing tall and proud, angled inward towards the head as if to protect something vital, the spikes nearly doubling the height of C'Thun's head as they rested upon it like a crown.

  Behind her, Leira threw up.

  "Alright, here we are. Remember the safety instructions I gave earlier?" she said, trying her hardest to keep her excitement out of her voice. "Well quadruple it here. Watch your step and for the love of all that we hold dear don't touch anything! You all know what to do, so let's get to it. Fardol, Leira, try to stay back."

  Carefully and quietly, everyone proceeded down the steps. They fanned out around Sara, whispering as if afraid that making too much noise would rouse the giant. As they approached, the light from their lanterns made C'Thun look all the more sinister. Sara took out her detection wand and nervously took the reading of the surroundings. As she suspected, the latent magic in the air was heavily altered. She took a few steps towards C'Thun and took another reading, then another step towards it, writing down how the magic changed as she grew closer and closer to the Old God.

  Once she was closer to its head than the tips of its tentacles, she surrounded herself in a barrier. Ten yards from C'Thun's skin. Five yards. One yard, and she dared go no closer. She hopped back and shuddered, happy to not have to look at its limp, dead eyes. Just the sight of them made her feel like her own eyes were rolling back in their sockets.

  Everyone worked diligently, eager to get away from the monster, but this was also where there was the most data to collect, especially to see if there was any hint of the spell that linked the Old Gods to Azeroth's integrity. People regularly went back up the stairs to Fardol and Leira to have the former use the Holy Light on them, just in case. Except for Sara given her... adverse reaction to the Light, but luckily shouting at everyone earlier had put that out of their memory.

  Leira wouldn't look at her though.

  Ten minutes. Thirty minutes. One hour. The air was warm and smelled like dust, not death and decay like she'd expected and indeed, C'Thun's body was completely untouched by any decomposition. They attempted to scrape slime off the walls to culture, but there was nothing alive in the entire chamber except for them. The entire time Sara would have even felt welcome in the chamber, if it wasn't for the way C'Thun's eyes had rolled back in its head or the tons of dirt hanging above them, poised to implode at the slightest disturbance.

  Another shiver graced her spine with its presence.

  She did some modifications on the detection wand. Analyzing the latent magic was all well and good, but she needed C'Thun's own magic signature. She again approached the Old God, and lightly tapped the surface of its skin, shielded and bracing for the worst.

  Nothing happened. The detection wand's transparent shards filled up with horrible, inky purple magic that gave her flashbacks to when her own magical signature was taken. It had been the same color, hadn't it?

  The instant the detection wand had enough magic she pulled it away and gingerly retreated, writing down the numbers it had. She didn't have the time to arrange it into a proper signature graph, but just by looking at it Sara had the uneasy feeling that it was the same sawtooth pattern that the faceless had, that she had. Maybe even more similar to hers than the faceless one's signature had been.

  After an hour and a half, they were done. There were just two more things left to do and they could leave. She returned to the stairs and handed Fardol the detection wand. "Burn the magic out of it," she said. "If you think you there's any left at all, keep burning it. If you're not sure if you burned it enough, keep burning it."

  "Roger," he said as he took it in his hands, which began to glow. Next to him, Leira was still green at the gills and pointedly avoiding looking at Sara.

  That churning in Sara's stomach was surely just the presence of C'Thun, right?

  She climbed back down the stairs, grabbed a simple wooden staff, and raised her voice. "Alright! Everyone gather around!" Several people jumped, but began to approach. "Alright, that's all the data we need from the instruments. The next step is the two spells I need to cast personally. Relax, I'm not going to bring it back from the dead or anything." She rolled her eyes. "Was hard enough doing that for you lot," she said, successfully getting a good natured chuckle. "Just in case though, if I say to stop me, or you suspect I absolutely need to stop, then counterspell the shit out of me. Now clear a path!" she bellowed, and they formed a clear shot between Sara and C'Thun. She fixed the dead deity with a glare, and raised the staff in her right hand.

  Deathly green magic flared around her hands and flowed along the shaft of wood as she directed her powers at C'Thun. She hadn't been lying, she wasn't going to revive C'Thun, but there was another use for her resurrection powers. Determining the state of the eldritch monster's soul.

  When a body died, the soul began to drift and it left a 'path' through the nether. Her magic had always been able to follow this path, even when she was young and hadn't known what she was actually doing. The further a soul drifted the harder it was for her magic to reach it, and harder for her to pull it all the way back to its body. Larger souls were also 'heavier' in magical terms, but all souls drifted at the same rate and even the slightest touch of her resurrection magic had always been able to tell her how far a soul had drifted into the afterlife.

  She didn't know how far C'Thun's soul had drifted.

  It was like having a flashlight and shining it into a long dark tunnel, trying but failing to see where it ended. So cautiously, she began to extend her magic through the massive path C'Thun's soul had left upon its death, searching for how far it drifted. Sara extended her magic as far as it could go, further and further, but with absolutely no success and soon she was forced to withdraw it. When she was done she fell to the ground and the staff clattered to the stone.

  The crowd of mages and warlocks gasped, and Maria approached her, but Sara held up a hand. "I'm fine, I'm fine. Just pushed myself a little far." There was no reason for C'Thun's soul to have gotten so far from its body. Even having been dead for thirty years, she should've been able to at least find it if not revive it. The only explanation was that C'Thun had actively driven its soul impossibly far from its body. What did that mean?

  She had a few guesses. The most likely one was that C'Thun was going to try and find some other world to torment, that it decided Azeroth was too much trouble, wasn't worth it, and so was off to find another planet entirely. If that was the case Sara didn't really know the Old God's fate. Whether its spirit haunted a new innocent world, or the Twisting Nether had torn the weakened Old God's ghost apart, it didn't matter.

  As far as Azeroth was concerned, C'Thun was gone for good.

  "I'm fine," she insisted again. "Thalnek, Alrinn, come here. I need your help to set up an array. You too, Fardol. Your part is the last after these two are done."

  The high elf and gnome approached her, and she began to describe the magical array she needed set up around herself. It took the two mages a half hour of spell casting to get it done, but when they were finished a multifaceted negative feedback rit
ual circle had been conjured around her, its purple glow piercing the gloom of the Old God's lightless grave.

  "Excellent. Fardol, I need you to consecrate the land between one and two and a half yards around me. Can you do that?"

  "Oddly specific, but I can try," he admitted as he approached the ritual. Standing at its edge, he lifted a fist and enshrouded it with golden power, then slammed it to the ground after a short pause. Sara winced as a cloud of holy power blew outwards from him, but like she'd requested it didn't approach more than a yard to her. There. The ritual, combined with the holy ground, would keep anything horrible from getting to her from this next spell. She was ready.

  Sara reached out her mental magic to C'Thun's brain.

  The first thing she noticed was that the Old God's mind was absolutely gargantuan. Nothing else was expected, really, but holy shit that was a giant brain. There was no spark of life in it, but the lack of decay meant the veritable rain forest of mind links were as intact as they were on the day the Liberality Confederacy killed C'Thun. She had absolutely no idea where to even begin. With humanoids, animals, there was a pattern. Their brains all worked more or less the same way. Brain stem, cortex, different locations for different processes. But an Old God? All Sara could do was guess, so guess she did. She reached out blindly, created a tentative mind reading link between her mind and -

  Dead soil.

  Sands.

  Mortals inside.

  Red skies.

  Blood rivers.

  Mortals fighting inside.

  Injured inside.

  Shattered aqir.

  Oceanic depths.

  Screams.

  Mortal before it.

  Walking mountains.

  Clashing storms.

  Darkness.

  Metal skin.

  Mortal with magic.

  The smell of its own burning flesh.

  Its first cast of an eye beam.

  Mortals surrounding it.

  Surrounding it.

  Surrounding.

  Abandon.

  Try.

  Mortal with magic.

  Familiar magic.

  Fly blown plains.

  Very familiar magic.

  World's roof.

  Horrified screams laughing on the wind.

  Snow mountains.

  Prison of the usurpers.

  Elaborate.

  Giant.

  Flawed.

  Barely flawed.

  Battling metal creatures from beyond.

  Metal structures all around.

  Metal soldiers guarding one.

  Metal watchers guarding one.

  Guarding one deep inside.

  Guarding one inmate.

  Inside.

  Familiar magic.

  Usurper prison.

  The mortal has magic.

  Familiar magic.

  Usurper prison in the north.

  Mortals killing it.

  Black empires worshiping it.

  Torturing in its name.

  Mortal before it.

  Mortal with -

  "SARA, STOP!" someone shouted. She gasped and felt her magic fly away as a counterspell collapsed around her. She almost made to stumble, but caught herself as she returned to reality. She was still in Ahn'Qiraj, with miles of stone perched above her. Blinking the visions out of her mind, she looked around.

  "Oh shit," she whispered. The arcane runes around her sparked and popped, and the yellow cracks in the stone signifying consecrated land had turned bruise-purple. "What happened?"

  "My consecration started ta turn desecrated, we stopped ya as quick as we could but they had some trouble gettin' a counterspell to stick with the ritual around ya."

  "That's good, that's good. If it turned corrupted then it did its purpose. Better the magic go into the consecration than me." Swinging her arms back, Sara jumped out and over the defiled land and backed away from it, still holding her head. "I'm fine, I'm fine. It was a bit intense is all. Showed me a sort of slide show of... I don't really know. Went by so fast." That was a lie. It had gone by at a perfect rate for her to understand. She remembered every single vision that C'Thun's dead brain had shown her, even if they left her a little weak in the knees. "That's all our business in Ahn'Qiraj done. Katherine, please open us a portal back to Stormwind so we can start prepping for a visit to the Maelstrom."

  The mage nodded. "Right away."

  While the mage began casting, Sara collected all the data they'd collected and stored it in her pack. It must've been past midnight, but so close to C'Thun she felt like she could run a marathon. Within seconds Katherine finished opening the portal, carving a spherical tear in space-time to the Wizard's Sanctum. Everyone began to vanish into it one by one, until Sara was alone with Leira, Fardol, and C'Thun.

  "So," she said.

  "I have my own hearthstone," Fardol said as he took out a small white rock engraved with a blue swirl. "It's been a pleasure keepin' ya safe Miss Smithers, but do try ta keep caution whenever ya end up goin' to the other Old Gods. Ya saw what almost happened here, after all." He started rubbing the hearthstone, which immediately began to glow green. After exactly ten seconds he vanished with a clap of thunder, leaving only a series of blue spheres in the air that faded as soon as she saw them.

  "I have a hearthstone too," Leira said, taking it out. "I have to get back to the Chimes, tell them about the Hammer. Probably go fight the Legion too, heh. Show those demons who's boss."

  "Yeah," Sara said, glancing at the hungry portal behind her. "Leira are... we okay?" she asked hesitantly, bowing her head in fear of the answer.

  The draenei sighed. "I don't know Sara. This is a lot to take in. I mean it's... faceless magic. Talk to you later, I just need to think about this." The warrior began to rub her own hearthstone and promptly vanished, leaving Sara alone with the monster.

  "Yeah," she whispered to herself. "I guess it is a lot." She turned to the portal. "Well, here goes nothing." She began walking to it, replaying C'Thun's visions in her mind. A lot of it was a jumbled mess of its time ruling Azeroth and its time imprisoned, but something stuck out to her. The usurper prison in the north, with a single inmate. There was only one place that could be, and it didn't fit with the rest of its dim memories.

  C'Thun had shown her Ulduar.

  Sara

  The portal loomed before her, and despite the thoughts of Ulduar consuming her mind she didn't delay in entering it. Immediately the pale blue color wrapped around her like a warm bath and submerged her just like one. It felt like she was falling, falling faster than should've been possible, and then something jerked her upwards. Like rain, the portal's streaking blue and white washed down from around her.

  Sara landed with a grunt inside the Wizard's Sanctum, stumbling once. Her legs still hurt, a persistent ache throbbing in them despite the rejuvenating spell Leira had cast on her. Maybe her healing spell needed some more time to do its work.

  The portal had brought Sara to a relatively small portion of the Wizard's Sanctum, not much more than a tunnel with a frame-contained sea green portal on either end that led to the rest of the tower. Pushed against the walls were shelves filled with higher-level magical tomes and benches containing various alchemical mixtures, with mages attending to them. What really caught her interest though, was the fact that the twelve people who'd come through not a minute before had all mysteriously vanished.

  She frowned. They couldn't have just left, could they? They were still on an expedition and the next stage of their journey was the Maelstrom. Though maybe she should go to Ulduar first...

  Sara wasn't given any more time to wonder where everyone else had gone, because a high elf dressed in the well-embroidered archmage robes approached her, a frown on her ruby lips. "Miss Smithers I presume?"

  Oh no. "Yes, what is it?" she asked, curious. "Where is everyone else? I wasn't that far behind them, was I?"

  "About that," she said in a voice as sickening sweet as honey. "We've b
een waiting on you for a few weeks now." Her heart began to race. She had a few ideas as to what was going on. Especially since now that she looked closer, there was a man leaning against one of the portal frames in casual clothes, but he was far too muscular and tanned to be a spellcaster. "It's no fault of your own understand, but your expedition was rather unfortunately timed and we've only now been able to get in contact with you for your assignment."

  Her throat clenched. No. It couldn't be. Not when she'd just gotten - "Assignment?" she squeaked, forcing as much meekness into her posture as possible.

  "Yes." The high elf reached into one of her robe's pockets and pulled out a sheet of paper, covered in heavy amounts of writing. Sara snatched it away and began running her eyes over it furiously, committing it to memory. "Not just for you but for the others you've brought with you. Speaking of which, I believe you left with twice as many?" Sara was about to answer, but the archmage cut her off. "Well given where you've been, I can assume you ran into some difficulties with the natives. My condolences. Anyway I'm getting off topic. Magister Smithers, by the royal Battlemage Declaration you are hereby conscripted into the Alliance armed forces to assist in hostilities against the Burning Legion until such time as their invasion has been successfully repelled."

  Her stomach dropped like a stone. No. No, no no no this wasn't - "T-That's a bad idea," she said, mustering as much strength as she could. "I have no endurance, no cardio, no combat training, there's no way I would be of any assistance and my research into the Old Gods is far more - "

  Again, the archmage cut her off. "I understand you are eager to complete your thesis, but understand we are not ending your trip, merely suspending it until the Legion is repelled. It doesn't matter if we know how to undo the Old Gods' spell if Kil'jaeden kills us all anyway, I'm sure you understand. Especially given the... difficulties you encountered in Silithus." Sara struggled not to let her surprise show. She knew about the Hammer? Who had told her?! "As for lacking training, I will let Officer Gurkins explain to you your role." She turned around and nodded to him. "Officer. I need to take my leave. There's still much paperwork for me to do, however well timed your reappearance was."