Death Never Dies

by Milton Garby

  She and Derestrasz stood in front of it, and she motioned for him to grab her hand. He did; his human form's skin was almost painfully warm, and she shuddered in revulsion at the contact but ignored her disgust and led the two of them inside.

  The shifting pinpricks of light grew painfully intense, stuck to her, and then with an inaudible whoosh the two of them were teleported.

  Unlike portal travel, teleportation was instant. One moment she was outside. Then there was a flash of blinding light and, when it cleared, they were inside.

  The first thing that hit her was the warmth, enough to warrant unbuttoning her jacket and pulling down the hood. Her hair was frazzled, but so what? Then, she took off the glasses since there was no risk of snow-blindness.

  Luckily, the inside of Ulduar was nowhere near as heavily guarded as the outside. They'd arrived in a hallway sized for the Titans. There were all sorts of ornate pictures on the walls, or constellation holograms of the various races of Azeroth, but Sara was more focused on searching for anyone who might've seen their teleportation.

  Nobody. The air was still and stagnant but clean, as if fresh air had once been pumped in and never breathed again. Now she just needed to find a way forward to Yogg-Saron without...

  She motioned for Derestrasz to wait, and went behind him. He turned his head around to raise an eyebrow at her, but she flashed him a reassuring smile.

  'Guard me real quick,' she mouthed. He nodded and turned his attention back ahead.

  The iron constructs did not consider red dragons as threats. Red dragons were also made by the Titans, also made to guard Azeroth, and were not corrupt. So why would they worry about them? If they were to come across, say, a sleeping red drake, then why would they take any action? Sure it was unusual, but the presence of a lone, napping dragon they were allied with was nothing to be worried about. And when the time came, Sara could easily return, wake him up, and pretend nothing had happened.

  Then she remembered she could use telepathy.

  Sara reached her magic into his mind and telepathically whispered. 'Walk forward, stick to the walls.' He nodded and moved forward. The hallway was made of several alcoves, where the width grew narrower for a brief distance. She planned to hide Derestrasz behind one, and knock him out. She followed his lead, breaths shallow and when he was hidden she, still behind him, reached into the disguised dragon's mind and instantly knocked him out. Another flicker of magic, and he was unable to wake up.

  He hadn't collapsed into a very ideal position, so she grabbed his limp body and wrestled it into a corner, sitting upright. Then Sara began peered closer, and snuffed out his ability to dream. After that, with some trial and error, as well as telepathic whispers to him, she removed his ability to form new memories. It took her hours and left her mana pool almost empty, but she did it.

  Derestrasz wouldn't impede her. When she was done she could come back, wake him up, and he'd be none the wiser.

  Sara forced down a yawn and, alone, continued forward into Ulduar.

  She had to admit, Ulduar was as beautiful as it was massive. Sprawling corridors of gold and bronze extended around her. The floor was made of intricate tiles of innumerable runic geometries. It was unfortunate the hallway was so long, though. Was she even making any -

  Thud thud!

  Sara held her breath and hid behind an alcove. The thud thud of some mechanical creation came closer, closer, closer... and then left. She almost whimpered at what was surely a near-death experience.

  What the hell was she doing?

  Moving slowly and carefully, she went from one hiding alcove to the next. The urge to sleep began tugging at her eyelids, but she powered through until she reached the end of the hallway, which terminated in a three-way intersection. One path led to the left, another to the right, and a third straight ahead to two stairs, both of which went up to the same place. In between the two stairs was the hologram of an enormous, constellation serpent.

  Her gut said that she had to go down to reach Yogg-Saron, but forward also seemed to be the way.

  Sara was halfway to the stairwell when a patrol of two iron vrykul came in through the left corridor. She froze and dashed to hide next to the constellation's pedastal, heart hammering in her chest. Sitting down only made them appear taller than they were. They turned to her and her heart nearly stopped, but when they turned and continued as if they'd seen nothing, she nearly melted in relief.

  Climbing the stairs was harder without Derestrasz's help since they were still Titan-sized stairs, but step by step, minute by minute, Sara made her way up. Her legs burned and her heart threatened to leap from her throat, but she couldn't stop now. She was so close. The Old God magic pouring into her was slowly but steadily ramping up as she grew closer to Yogg-Saron. Her mana pool had already filled back up from being depleted on the dragon, and she felt like she could raze a fortress to the ground.

  Not an Ulduar-sized fortress though.

  She reached the top, where the two stairwells merged back together, and her breath left her body.

  Whoa.

  The inner sanctum of Ulduar was laid out before her. A bridge, wide enough to fit an army, expanded in front. It led to what could vaguely be described as a wheel. The wheel was made of circular plateaus, each melting into one another, with astral beacons providing light. Craning her neck back she saw more astral lights on the cavernous ceiling, but even then she got the impression that there was light coming from some unseen source. A multitude of gateways left the wheel, and each had a floating symbol in their maws. A blue snow flake, a red cog, a green flower, and a yellow lightning bolt. But... there was one exception.

  The tunnel to her immediate left lacked such a symbol and simply led out of sight.

  In the middle of the wheel was a gargantuan hole, upon which rested a pillar of glass. The cerulean glass started on the lip of the gaping hole, but curved upwards into a thin shape like the bottom half of an hourglass, all the way up to the ceiling. The entire expanse was eerily silent, and Sara couldn't see anyone. No iron dwarves, no iron vrykul, no nothing. The room was the size of Stormwind, sure, but even then... nothing.

  She walked forward, careful to step as lightly as she could. Despite her efforts, it felt like her every step ricocheted off the walls and pillars to deafening effect. But there was nobody around to hear. She crossed over the bridge, hoping and praying it wouldn't collapse into the abyss beneath, and almost gasped in relief when she got to the other side. Then she looked at the two stairwells, one which went left and one that went right.

  She went left. It was easier to go down the stairs than up, but still awkward as Sara kept having to lower herself down, all while keeping a death grip on her modified distraction gem. By the time she got down the stairs she was panting for breath and her legs felt like they were made of fire, so she found a relatively concealed location to rest, eat another ration pellet, and calm her nerves.

  A statue passed by her.

  A walking, hooded statue the size of a dragon and its twin, passed by her. Currents of electricity passed in between the two, and Sara got the impression that their presence strengthened each other. With her newfound wrath she could destroy them... probably. But in doing so she'd undoubtedly attract the attention of the rest of Ulduar.

  That thought reminded her she was likely on a time limit, so she got back up and continued to walk left, out of the sight of the statues. It was a straight path, but it was still a very long way to reach the left-most hallway.

  As she walked further in, the lights seemed to dim. There were stained glass windows on all sides, and in front of her what appeared to be an open locking mechanism. A metal head with glowing blue eyes was above a shower curtain of light rays, none of which seemed to be harmful. The windows were odd. One held what appeared to be human babies, but with naga tails. One was reaching towards what seemed to be tadpoles. The window across from it showed a single, fully grown human with an outrageously large orange beard and a fish tail, holding a trident
in both hands. There more windows. Some were replicas of each other. Others were equally odd.

  She continued, past the mirrors and under the open 'door'. The hallway was, as was everything in Ulduar, large and took a long time to traverse, but she finally seemed to be alone so there was that.

  At the end there were more windows, but the one on the left had been shattered. One pillar that had once held an astral light was reduce to rubble. Sara peered through the massive hole to find another room, with slabs of rock forming a pseudo-staircase down. There were more window pictures, but they were progressively stranger. A human's head, but their body was instead a long green rectangle that, at the bottom, came apart into tentacles. Pillars tilted to one side. Flickering astral lights.

  And dead faceless ones. They were sprawled out on the floor, riddled with holes, slashes, and burns. Black blood covered the ground around their bodies, and none of them showed any hint of decomposition. They smelled like death, a reassuring scent in the metallic halls of Ulduar.

  Looking out over the scene, Sara nodded and made her way down. Going down the rubble stairs was difficult, but with some creativity she managed it. She avoided the faceless ones, lest she trip over their sprawling tentacle arms, and kept descending.

  The room she found herself in only lead to another broken-up room. Like before, the gateway was a shattered window, however for this window some of the tauren-sized shards of glass still hovered in the middle of the frame, slowly rotating under an unseen force. In this second room, there were skeletons instead of faceless. More windows too, but one of them had been shattered by a green growth of rock.

  Sara made a little detour and approached the rock. It wasn't exactly green, blue-green with a metallic sheen was more appropriate, and it was huge. Even so it was so high up that even if she jumped she couldn't touch it. Being close to it, however, she could see moving shades of color underneath its rugged surface, almost like it was breathing. Standing in its presence sent warm pulses through her head, relieving a building headache she hadn't noticed until that moment.

  She caught herself. What was she doing? This was, without a doubt, saronite. The congealed blood of Yogg-Saron, a metallic substance that whispered to those in its proximity and inexorably drove them insane. Even with her link to the Old God, she shouldn't assume she'd be immune to its properties. Sara continued forward into the next shattered room. She hopped from slab to slab, slowly making her way down, and walked through another shattered window - complete with floating glass - into the third colossal room.

  This next room rivaled the size of the Mage Quarter in Stormwind. The Titanic tiles on the ground had gone black, covered with solidified fog and corpses - not bones, there was zero rotting - from various humanoid races. Windows lined the circular room's edges, each separated by a dull red pillar, and these were the strangest thus far.

  There was one picture of the human head atop a green rectangle. There were others of seaweed - maybe tentacles - underwater. Others with a strange creature with many pairs of eyes stacked on top of each other, with a fanged mouth. Two of the windows were also broken, punctured through by growths of saronite, and another stained glass window was entirely absent from its frame, revealing a greenish black rock behind it. Light shone down from above, illuminating several colossal glass shards floating in mid air. The upper half of the room lacked all Titanic design, being nothing but saronite-tainted rock. She shivered; Sara hated being underground.

  There were two more faceless corpses on the room, far larger than the earlier ones. But overshadowing them all was the body of one single faceless, different from all the rest and standing even taller than a dragon, almost in the center of the room.

  Legs trembling from all the walking, Sara approached. Her feet clacked along the befouled floor, all interest in stealth gone. It was a long journey to reach the fallen faceless one, but she made it and examined it.

  Where the other faceless were leathery and scaly gray, this one was covered in a greenish carapace from head to toe. The natural armor formed shoulder pads covered in yellow spikes, and instead of tentacles his arms ended in giant lobster claws. His chest was covered in yellow plates, and to each side a relatively small, spiked purple tentacle curled against his side. He was 'face' down, which made seeing his head impossible, but Sara could still make out two long greenish tendrils that sprouted from his head, with a yellow leaf-like spade on their ends. A thick, muscular and armored tail came out from behind him, tapering off into an impossibly sharp point, and on the faceless one's back were three pairs of spiked scythes, one on top of the other.

  All of it was limp. Stopping next to him she reached out a hand and stroked one of the unscathed patches of armor. Contrary to her expectations it was warm and squirmed under her hand. She imagined if a limb falling asleep could be felt by other people, it would feel like touching this creature's armor. She stepped back and looked him over and sighed. There was something... melancholy about seeing something so unfathomably ancient brought low like this.

  It didn't matter. She was almost there. The nervous tingle in her gut urged her to go on, to go through the gateway and to her final destination. So she did.

  The open doorway brought her to a small room, and that small room in turn brought her to the prison of Yogg-Saron.

  It was large, almost as large as the previous room. There was a hole in the ceiling, which led to the glass tube that Sara had seen from above; she had finally circled back around, and was now standing underneath where she had been relatively recently. She made sure her distraction gem was still blazing, and pushed forward. Spaced relatively evenly, four podiums stood at the edges of the prison, but each was empty. Enormous, ghostly blue chains hung from the walls, shattered beyond any use, and growths of saronite hugged the corners. The ground was utterly in disarray, with no evidence of any patterning whatsoever which made her smile in delight. Holes punched through the land in places where the Old God must have once sent its tentacles to battle the Kingslayers, not to mention the dozens of faceless corpses that littered the room.

  Sara walked closer, feeling her breathing come in nervous gasps. She'd made it. She was standing in the same room as a dead Old God, all alone. She didn't need to look up at Yogg-Saron, she knew it was there. Not what it looked like, but it was there.

  The floor dipped as she went closer, the cracks grew wider, and were more thoroughly colored by the taint of saronite. She walked closer and closer, but then the ground emptied into a basin of bubbling, churning, liquid saronite and she dared go no closer.

  Looking up, Sara caught sight of Yogg-Saron.

  It was clearly just the head. Where C'Thun had been radially symmetrical, Yogg-Saron was bilaterally symmetrical. She had the vaguest impression of a fish, or the head of a snake, with the rest of the body hidden underground. The head faced the entrance, and it was an impressive head. Off to the sides she could see pustules filled with long-stagnant green gas, and dreadlock-like tentacles that ran into the pool of liquid saronite. On top of Yogg-Saron's head were dark armor plates that she wouldn't be surprised to learn were indestructible.

  The front of the Old God's face was dominated with a single, massive maw with equally massive fangs, but the monster was dead so its fangs had impaled its own flesh. Instead of eyes, Yogg-Saron had eye-holes, and instead of two it had eight, and all of them were filled with 'smaller' fangs. All those mouths were also limply shut. The Old God's head was limp and motionless, sending no waves through the perpetually churning saronite.

  Alright. Sara had arrived.

  Now what? She had no instruments, nothing to record with. But the magic that pooled in her seemed to pool in her chest, almost like it was being attracted to Yogg-Saron. Sara grimaced. That was a terrible, terrible idea. Who knew what directly touching an Old God would do to her? But... she'd already come so far. Was she really willing to just leave and call it a night, after getting nothing but a scenic tour?

  She put a foot into the saronite pool.

&nb
sp; It was warm, warm like a fever and thick as honey. Her left foot sank until it hit something hard - either rock or solid saronite - and she grimaced. Sara pulled her foot back out of the pool, and watched as the liquid saronite sluggishly ran off and left not a trace behind. Her foot was still dry. Then she waded in, approaching Yogg-Saron's body. The pool wasn't even knee deep, and the currents felt like they were massaging her legs. But as she grew closer and closer to the Old God, her anticipation grew and it seemed as if her magic was tugging her, urging her to get closer.

  To touch it.

  Yogg-Saron loomed above her, right in front of Sara. She gulped, and reached out her left hand to the brownish, leathery skin. Her hand was so close. Its presence was overwhelming and her vision blurred.

  She was...

  She, she couldn't...

  The slth'ret empire was vast and their numbers were many, locked in perpetual war with the elementals. Yogg-Saron had decided the elementals would win, as had N'Zoth, while C'Thun and Y'Shaarj were corrupting and empowering the slth'ret. Tsa'Thannon had elected to stay out of the business, instead casually torturing the -

  What was going on? The slth'ret? She saw the image of a strange quadraped with legs for eyes that moved by levitation, but there was no record of -

  It was small, microscopic, trying to eek out a living in a nutrient rich pond, but it had just made an ally. C'Thun, they called it. It was a good name. It decided its name would be -

  Yogg-Saron was showing her things. They were so much more structured than C'Thun's vision and Sara felt the images burning themselves onto -

  The sky was red with its foul power. Yogg-Saron raised a massive tentacle and smashed it against N'Zoth, sending earthquakes through the land. C'Thun and Y'Shaarj moderated it and kept the destruction to one half of the planet. No sense in making the fod'et extinct when there was so much they could still harvest from them -