DISCLAIMER: I do not own any of the Blizzard trademarked characters mentioned in this story, nor the dialogue taken from Yogg'saron's encounter in Ulduar, and from the whispers when a player uses the Puzzle Box of Yogg'saron. Rain and Ataeia are my OC, characters I've played in game for years.
The song which inspired me to write this story: "Madness" by MrVoletron found on youtube.
Who could say when the heavy rains started or when the ursine musk faded into the smoke of the hearth fire. All her exhausted mind could understand from her scrambled senses was that he had found her and brought her home. Her body haggard, her mind weak, the only recollection of the past many days was a blur of sounds and scents and the sensation of cold giving way to the balmy jungle. The gentle melodic voices of the Tuskarr exchanged for rumbling tigers on the prowl, and hearty Pandarens chuckling over another full belly and cold brew. The last sensation she experienced before sleep took her was the shedding of her grime and gore stained gowns and traveling cloak.
"Prisoner? Ha! With its bindings shattered, its influence unchecked, it's gonna come after us...and WE'RE gonna be the prisoners."
The cold is forbidding, penetrating, cutting like a hot knife through butter down to her very bones. Her teeth set to chatter as she folds against herself within her cloak, an item lined with the thickest of worg pelts so surprisingly inadequate for warmth. Gloved hands fold sections of the fabric into tight fists as her gaze falls to the snow dusted stones beneath her feet. Her breath billows out in flashes of steam, which quickly freeze into crystals that crash to the ground under their newfound density, or leave a fine layer of frozen mist in her hair, which tumbles loosely from her large cowl.
"Trust is your weakness … " The voice is distant and, for all her reading of body language with flitting ice-blue eyes, meant for her ears alone. A sharp shiver wracks her frame as she wearily studies her companions - by all appearances a rag tag crew of Horde and Alliance heroes alike, on a mission to defeat the beast within the Titan's City.
"Rain?" a gentle voice coaxes her back out of the recesses of her mind, urging her to fight through the biting cold to focus on the task at hand. "They've managed to break the magical warding on the door to the inner halls. They're ready for us to begin our descent." Ataeia offers a warm smile; the huntress somehow acclimated to the chill of the dread North. Her spotted leopard gazes up at the priestess, its tail flicking to its own feline thoughts and no doubt its apprehension judging by raised cackles.
Unwilling to leave the basic protection of her cloak she simply nods, and lifts a half frozen foot clad in the thickest Shoveltusk leather to step over the threshold. Gradually, the chill lifts from her outermost layers and the incessant chattering of her teeth slows until only the fine muscles in her face twitch and strain from more than two hours spent in arctic temperatures. Her limbs fair no better, the joints lacking range of motion, her muscles so tight she feels strung at the ready like Ataeia's best bow.
The band of heroes travel ahead, Ataeia included, while the priestess remains in the empty court yard, sometimes eyeing the energy drained machine known as "XT-002 Deconstructor", to be further briefed by Brann Bronzebeard. So when she rejoins them it is to take a direct route, if such a thing could be said for a deep mountain fortress the likes of which any Dwarven population would be lacking skill to produce, its twisting bowels for halls casting oblong shadows at every turn, to the very prison of Death Himself. Each step serves to generate enough heat to melt the cold, her blood warming with each pump of her heart, her posture becoming more erect with every yard traveled.
"Do you dream while you sleep or is it an escape from the horrors of reality?" The whispers find her once more, seeping to her like fog, rising only to coalesce about her, probing at her ears in an attempt to infiltrate her mind. Her head rises slowly, self-aware of her soft panting and flared nostrils, as she surveys the back of her hunter companion only to find her none the wiser. A gloved hand reaches up to rub at her temple, hoping to soothe whatever anxiety has taken hold of her in the cold of the Storm Peaks. Her blue eyes slowly drink in their surroundings, taking note of gorgeous stonemasonry, gold filigree inlaid throughout the carvings on every wall. What appear to be holographic constellations of different sorts of Azerothian Humanoids, some posed in battle stance, some studying, glow ethereally from their stone bases. These statuesque items grasp her attention for a long moment as she notices a Night Elf druid, a Tauren warrior, a Human of some talent and what might be some sort of snake-like dragon before she feels compelled to stall in her tracks.
Her legs lock tight, the knees refusing to hinge, hips unable to swing, thigh muscles quivering with a ferocity that triggers fight-or-flight when she sees it. A tall, taller still than any male Tauren or Night Elf, fleet-footed shadowy being darts across her path no more than arm's length away. It's fast, zigzagging among the decorations like a wicked child running rampant in a museum. As it passes her again, its gaze, if such a thing could be said of a visage bearing nothing but a gaping maw with daggers for teeth, turns to greet her. Its arm reaches out to her, a forefinger pressing the pad to the space above-and-between her eyes, and hisses.
A chain of creeping dark smoke, or perhaps just a shadow, pours forth from that hideous mouth, down the length of its arm, to its finger where it remains in contact with her. The darkness spreads across her skull like a coronet, seeping through her skin and journeying down her ear canals to knock on her eardrums. "You are a pawn of forces unseen …" The whispers fill her mind, reverberating within; a ferocity which makes her dizzy. The wickedness of the tone, the inviting, demanding, uncompromising rhythms of the words slowly take root within her grey matter. Like a mother cuckoo to a stranger's nest, it plants the thoughts of some venomous consciousness set loose, looking to sow its own in the minds of others, to force out the sanity of its host.
She starts, almost escaping the clutches of her dream state only to be made aware of another distant voice coaxing her back while the tingling sensation of a mind vision spell continues to ripple across the skin of her forehead.
"Rain?" the voice queries, rising up through light and dark to wrap its familiar arms around her and tug her back down.
"Rain! What's wrong?" Ataeia half asks, half demands of the priest having stopped and turned only to find her frozen in her tracks, sweat beading on her cheeks. With pupils dilated and jaw muscles clenched tight, she simply shakes her head deigning to speak.
"It's nothing," she musters, her voice distant as the whispers of the wind in the mountains. Ataeia strides forward with a sympathetic frown and outstretched arms, stepping behind her and holding her with an air of protection and determination as she grasps her biceps and propels her forward. "Come on, we're nearly there," she intones, her fingers giving a reassuring squeeze and the leopard rumbles a purr as it rubs its large body against her brocade gowns.
"The void sucks at your soul. It is content to feast slowly…"
Rain moans softly as her right hand returns to rub at her temple, shutting her eyes tight against the voice wracking her mind. She tilts her head against her palm and with a heavy sigh, begins taking the ancient stone steps down towards their team. Shattered stained glass crunches beneath her feet, the sound urging her eyes to open and take in her newest surroundings. A large room strewn with bodies belonging to what appear to be some sort of cultists, bare and bloody next to a beast one part crustacean, one part hulking giant and all counts nightmarish greet her. Carvings on the wall bear the images of all sorts of tentacled creatures flanked on either side by beautiful, otherworldly stained glass portraying the Titans themselves. "There is no escape, not in this life, not in the next …" the voice begins in the back of her mind, almost natural in its inflection, its airy musical chords sound so similar to her own thoughts that she simply nods at the idea. "No, of course not," she mumbles, prompting Ataeia to eye her for a moment. "Did you say something?" she suggests, noting Rain's distant and confused look. "Never mind, look, here we are!" she manages almost cheerily.
A group of varied faces, Draenei and Tauren, paladin and druid, Forsaken and Sin'dorei, priest of the shadow and arcane-hungry magi, tusky Troll and gentle Human, shaman and shield bearer, and a shady pair of Ravenholdt rogues - an Orc and Gnome alike, all greet her in one warm and respectful manner.
A timid smile finds a way to paint a facade across her face, masking the confusion in her mind. She clears her throat and corrects her posture, nodding imperceptibly to Ataeia to free her of her cloak and retrieve her staff, brought ahead with the rest of her effects, so that she might pray over their endeavor. Her gaze sweeps the group with honest warmth as she slowly peels her gloves from her hands; they too retrieved by her hunter companion, when she sees it again. A satyr, or so the depths of her memory offers up freely, lingers at the back of the group. Garbed in the darkest of night-shadow he stands. Watching, waiting, inching forward each time she blinks. "Have you had the dream again? A black goat with seven eyes that watches from the outside…"
"Shall we pray?" she suggests, her hands spreading forth in front of her, encompassing the lot with the loving gesture. Upward facing palms extend to her sides, her arms wide and welcoming as she is handed her staff and those of the Alliance persuasion kneel before her automatically. Gripped gently within the right, the staff is brought down to tap the ground thrice, while the particularly devout Draenei among them gently clasps her left hand between the two of his, head bowed over it. At the third strike of her staff, she hears a voice in her mind - a hybrid accent between hers and an echoing masculine madness. "Hope is an illusion," swirls in her head, creeping forward to nibble at her frontal lobe, scratching at her motivation. The satyr watches intently, or so she feels, its face lacking all features aside from that same gaping maw. It mockingly assumes a resting stance, hands clasped in front, while she notices the Troll shaman encouraging the less faithful of the Horde to at least cover their bases. They reluctantly kneel, though their act of religious fealty is more of a sitting lotus as though they commune with their ancestors and not the Light.
"Unto the darkness we bring ourselves, guided by the very heart of the Light. Knowing not weakness or failure, only perseverance in the face of peril," "In the sunken city, he lays dreaming …" She furrows her brow at the voice whispering to her from within. "Fortitude in the face of pain, righteousness in the presence of sinners," "All that you know will fade," "Humbled by the golden Light we step forward, assured of our victory against the darkness," her voice trembles as the satyr blinks in and out of existence. Closer and closer he approaches, her voice seizing in her throat, sweat dampening her brow, her mind warping between her voice and His. "… Knowing that all whom hold steadfast in their convictions shall be delivered. Sword arms shan't falter, the mind clear and sharp," "There is no sharp distinction between what is real, and unreal …" the voice reminds her. Or is it her voice? His voice? She can feel the sweat dripping down the back of her neck, the precise sensation of sharply filed nails raking her back. " … Masters of the arts which balance Light and Darkness knowing not the lust of sin and a forsaken path. Arrows ring true, war hammers strike hard, for we are the warriors of the Light, upon a duty most sacred and high!" "It is standing right behind you... Do not move... Do not breathe…" her mind succumbs to the intruder.
Two perfect blue spheres roll backwards into the depths of pink lids, sweat pours from every pore and her linen shift clings to her lithe frame. Her chest heaves as hyperventilation sets in and acute pain courses through her bronchi. Her knees tremble and buckle as she falls forward into the arms of the Draenei, her tired bones clattering against his plated frame. As he lowers her gently to the ground, a hand cupping the back of her head, she seizes fully. Her frame kicking and twisting, arms flailing, jaw clenching and unclenching as the taste of iron floods her mouth. Her blood spills forth from her lips as her eyes flutter open, in time to see the satyr bending down before her, bringing his hideous slavering mouth to lick and kiss up her blood.
She falls, faster and faster, through time and space, gravity giving way only to shove back. A throaty scream erupts from her vocal chords as the satyr's dagger-teeth clench down on her face.
She starts once more, breathing heavily, silk sheets cocooned around her and damp with sweat. A cotton cloth, warm and dry, is gently wiped across her brow. It dabs at her neck, her shoulders and breastbone. Someone or something releases the straightjacket that is her sheets, carefully replacing them with a set of dry linens. A pillow finds its way underneath her head and neck as the voice from the dark reaches out once more, her arms warm and inviting, promising, the voice sweet like candy.
"Rain?" it echoes, unclear at first, manifesting after many repetitions into a face that peers down at her. "Rain? What happened?" Ataeia frets, her gentle arms reaching underneath the priest to help her sit upright. "You were about to lead us in prayer when you suddenly took on the look of death and fell to your knees. If it weren't for our friend here," she gestures kindly to the Draenei who nods his head humbly, "your fainting spell would have ended with a cracked skull."
"Tell yourself again that these are not truly your friends," the voice articulates, effortlessly switching from her own feminine flute to a masculine bass, the rumbling and purring of vowels and consonants playing tricks on her sanity. She groans with furrowed brow and frowning mouth before pushing insistently at Ataeia while attempting to rise. The group, having gathered around her in genuine concern, slowly steps back with doubtful murmuring.
She rises slowly, sucking in gulps of air to ease her progress through the white hot flashes of dizziness. A hand is at her elbow, another at her back, as her world spins before her. Screams pierce her thoughts; shadows blink from one corner of an eye to the other and back again, as she feels herself moving forward. Like trudging through the deep bog, her limbs lift heavily as though something sucks them through the ground. Her hand grasps something hard, it seems to help her walk, her opposite hand clenches and unfurls as warmth permeates and erupts. Balls of gold Light float away from her to her allies, encompassing their frames wholly as they take lick after lick in a sea of writhing tentacles. She stumbles and pants; her vision grows hazy and then clear again. "They are coming for you," she insists. He insists. We insist. The screams begin within and slowly echo until they flood the room. The ground quakes to liquefaction as her eyes realize she's leaning on her staff, calling upon the Light with an adept second nature as she spins in circles. Body parts become dismembered and rocket through the air, blood splashes across her face, matting her yellow hair and turning it auburn. An arrow whizzes past, nicking her cheek as it pierces the serpentine flesh of a tentacle right before her.
A leopard darts past, challenging the world with a fearsome roar. Faceless beings with mammoth like trunks lumber about, knocking wildly into her compatriots with octopus arms and two toed feet. "Know that your end comes soon," she hisses aloud, choking on her own spit and blood. Her head is throbbing and exploratory fingers discover a gash at the brow, which freely expels blood like a toxin. Perhaps it is a toxin. It oozes thick and black, obscuring her vision, which perceives her world to be blurry, then buzzing. Like the very air was charged with static electricity, the images before her speed up frantically, freeze in time, and then return to movement at a sluggish pace. Someone stands in a beam of green light, several yards ahead and to her right, yet when she blinks there is the satyr, and there they are next to her left arm.
"Look around... They will all betray you... Flee screaming into the black forest…" The ground beneath their feet gives way as an orb shaped being with a thousand gaping maws rises up from the sludge beneath. A cold fog spreads through the room, seeping out from every crack and crevice, while some of the heroes fall into oblivion and others cling on to tentacles or the few remaining solid paving stones. The lights seem to flicker, like the dying magical lamps of Dalaran when dawn approaches but it's not yet sunrise. A booming voice shatters the walls of the prison and ghostly chains fall into the abyss opening up at her feet. An acrid stench floods her nostrils, swarms her taste buds and catches with a gag in her throat. The skin on her spine prickles, bumps peppering her flesh like a rapid onset of the pox, and her flesh begins to burn.
A sinister laugh greets the remaining champions with a gravity of its own. Each inward draw of the beast's breath furthers the chilling sound that rattles what one would presume to be its lungs. Phlegm the consistency of green abomination fluid flies into their faces, blinding their eyes, clogging their ears, cementing their mouths and nostrils shut. "BOW DOWN BEFORE THE GOD OF DEATH!" He drums with a defeaning, damning, soul-crushing roar. She stands with knees half-buckled, pigeon toed with kneecaps bucking against one another in an attempt to prevent her from falling to the ground. A white knuckled grip squeezes the circulating blood out of her hands as both appendages clutch her staff. The screams in her mind grow louder, louder, louder still until they erupt like a popped balloon to wake her from sleep.
"All places, all things have souls... All souls can be devoured…" the whispers withdraw from her mind to reverberate in the prison so loud they threaten to rupture their ear drums. Her breathing slows and her vision clears, her pupils constricting to a proper state and the images that float around her come into focus. Dismembered and beheaded bodies litter the area with gore. A belly's worth of intestines and stomach lie nearby, a pair of eyes bounce and roll down towards a hungry grin. A severed hand twitches its fingers with one last electrical pulse. A soul flies screaming from a body as its host falls at her feet, blood spurting from a puncture wound to the neck. Only a few remain - Ataeia, to which she sighs heavily in relief, the Draenei paladin whose plate though heavily dented remains intact, war hammer holding him erect. The shaman and druid made it through, though their ceremonial leathers are in scandalous tatters and the priest of the shadow having somehow managed to survive in light of his missing arm.
Her vision darts back and forth; her left hand combing matted hair back from her eyes before lifting the hem of her skirt to wipe the blood away. Her pulse slows and her breathing regulates as she bathes in a shaft of green light. There is a brief moment where everyone breathes but no one blinks, this "god" of death held in stasis by what she presumes to be one of the Titan keepers placed above them, slowing time just long enough to allow her and her compatriots to find restoration.
It does not take long before the satyr returns. Beckoning to her, flitting from one corner of the room to the next. At times it peers out from behind a swaying tentacle, in other moments it is right behind her, whispering in her ear. Finally it appears before her, hot rotting breath bathing her face with sheer terror. The rumbling laugh begins like an aftershock, the ground trembling as the keeper who held time in place falls unconscious. Her mind grows dark and addled as the satyr touches her forehead, and the gnawing beast to her left turns its wicked gaze upon her. "They are coming for you," he bellows.
One final act of lucid defiance drives her from the core of her being. She raises her staff on high, horizontal and gripped between trembling hands before she spins it rapidly and drives the tip into the ground between her feet. Cerulean eyes gaze forward, blinded by faith and a wave of Light rises from the jail of the damned, rushing towards her remaining companions. It showers her friends and allies with love and hope, shielding them in protective bubbles that pulsate about their frames.
"Rain, no!" Ataeia's scream pierces the air like her truest shot, spiraling towards her in a fury of hopelessness. Clutched tight at the waist by a tentacle and rattled about like a child's plaything, she holds out an accusing arm that signals behind the priestess. Rain turns slowly, causing the room to spin, the air to buzz, and her throat to clench tight refusing breath. A slender tentacle nearly matching her for size and shape slips up from a crack in the ground, drilling the air wildly before swooping in a wide arch.
*Crack!* The bone crunching fills her ears and turns her stomach to a boil. The vomit makes due haste and erupts from behind clenched teeth biting down on a horrified scream as the part of the old god cinches tight around her skull. Crushing, breaking, bruising, tearing. Hot, cold, life, death, the satyr appears in her mind's eye as she experiences the sensation of levitating slowly and aimlessly. The tentacle deposits her with a careless plop into the largest of the god's toothy grins and she plummets down until she lands hard upon stone and slime.
She lays reeling, her head pounding, and her brain swelling inside her skull. Her nose oozes blood and spinal fluid as she opens her eyes, prompted by one final whisper, only to see an image of Archbishop Alonsus Faol, whose sermons brought her to the loving embrace of the Light so many years ago, and Uther the Lightbringer, discussing the Light and guiding would be priests and young paladins. She smiles as her eyes become heavy with sleep and her final glimpse is rewarded with the death of her two greatest heroes. Lashing tentacles begin abusing her crouched frame by shredding her robes, bruising her muscles and breaking her bones. She slips in a pool of her own blood when she begins to rise and tumbles to the flagstones with another terrible blow to her head.
"It was … your fault …"
Seagulls caw. The surf is warm and gentle as she floats on her back on a mid summer's afternoon. The water soothes her aching muscles, twirls her hair like a lover whose gentle kiss is never far from hushed whispers at her ear. A smile teases at the corner of her mouth but cannot fully bloom. Her brows and eyes attempt to squint and furrow against the sunrise, which warms her face and neck like the very heat of Tanaris. Spring birds chirp and sing as they land atop the seawater like ducks on a pond, fluttering their feathers for a quick bath before carrying her to an emerald field. The breeze is lazy and balmy, drying her skin of the salty water as the grass soaks it up like a sponge. There's tightness at her wrist and as her mind's eye tries to make sense of it, the image of a tentacle coiling her like a boa causes her to jump.
Someone's weeping. Their breathless cries cripple them as they rock back and forth, their small delicate hands clasping her wrist. She's begging, pleading. "Please, don't give up!" she shouts, taking in the shaman, druid and even the shadow walking priest who have put their heads together and trying all they can to heal her. To keep the breath in her body, blood coursing through her veins, the very soul from slipping out. They frown at Ataeia, consoling her with a gentle hand on the shoulder, reciting that they've done everything that the laws of nature allow. All they can do is hope. She either lives or dies.
"Uulwi ifis halahs gag erh'ongg w'ssh."
Rain bolts upright in bed, her hands groping at the pockmarks, hills and valleys upon her face. She tries to furrow her brow, but it lies frozen. She attempts to be expressive with her eyes but the lids simply open. Her mouth manages to move, to speak, but cannot fully smile at the comforting arms which embrace her, the warm frame which rocks her and whispers "Shhh, easy now, I've got you," while she pants and cries.