Sometime the following month...
A shady deal was going down in one of Gadgetzan's many darkened back alleys. Several thugs from the Grimestreet Goons Gang were offloading crates from the back of a truck, and shuttling them into the warehouse they were parked behind. Some distance away, a female tauren and a male goblin wearing a three-piece pinstriped zoot-suit with matching fedora were discussing the business end of this deal. The goblin was smoking a cigar, counting out the stack of macaroons in his hand, while the tauren just looked bored.
"An' remembah..." the goblin said in a thick Undermine accent. "If any'ne asks where yah foun' all dis..."
"Yeah, yeah..." the tauren girl waved him off, and started walking back to the warehouse. "They fell off a truck, I got it." The goblin chuckled and shoved the stack of bills into his jacket as she walked away.
"Aight, boys, les' wrap it up 'ere," the goblin clapped his hands several times, to try and get the thugs moving... but all of them were standing still, looking up at the sky and the rooftops. "Oy! What're yah doin'? Git goin' yah gits!"
"Uh... boss?" one of the worgen asked, looking into the sky as he gripped his rifle tighter. "Didn't... didn't there used to be lights in this alley?"
"Yeah..." one of the orcs standing on the back of the truck's flatbed said. "There used to be stars, as well..."
The goblin looked up in the sky, and sure enough, all of the lights had been extinguished. And there was definitely something wrong with the sky. There weren't any stars, there wasn't any haze or smog... it was like someone had shut off the sky.
"...th' hell?" the goblin asked aloud. The only answer he received was a cold and bitter wind that began to blow through the alley...
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Much later, deep below Gadgetzan...
Tuera silently walked along one of the aisles in the large warehouse-like storage room beneath her safehouse. She was surrounded on all sides by stacks of felslate cages, practically piled on top of one another. Each cage was locked within a stasis field, to properly preserve the 'specimens' from being affected by the normal flow of time.
"I take it your hunting expedition was successful?" Tuera asked, pausing in her inspection to glance over her shoulder.
"It certainly was, Mistress," Phyacair rasped out. Even hovering several inches above the ground, he was still unable to sneak up on her. He softly touched down on the ground and pulled out his cane for support before approaching any further. "I managed to find more low-life brutes that no one will miss. They were from the Grimy Goons, this time." Tuera nodded approvingly, and continued on her stroll through the warehouse.
"Good. I'm going to need as much biomass as possible for the next phase of the project."
"The next phase, My Lady?" Phyacair asked, quickening his pace so he could walk alongside her. Tuera nodded, and when she spoke, she started gesticulating and speaking with an air of smug self-satisfaction. Like all genre-savvy supervillains, Tuera was well aware of the dangers of monologuing around those pesky 'hero' types... but damn if it wasn't surprisingly cathartic. And that meant, every once in a while, she'd 'get it out of her system' in the privacy and comfort of her own lair.
"Most of the bodies I've created as Shells have been relatively normal," she began. "After all, since the destruction of the Ashen Citadel, I've had to do nearly everything from memory. I practically had to start from scratch. As a result, these initial Shells have been relatively basic: very few runes, a distinct lack of genetic modifications, only the 'standard' organs, no technomancy implants... hell, you could almost call the bodies human." She chuckled. "And that means the biomass needed to grow them is an almost 1-to-1 exchange."
"I was wondering why the Shells seemed so fragile," Phyacair muttered, as they continued walking. The double doors in front of them opened, and the two of them entered into another section of the surprisingly expansive safehouse. They were surrounded on all sides by chromed metal tubes, with glass windows allowing them to look inside; each tube was filled with a strange brownish-green liquid that was very chunky and – upon close inspection – clearly not quite a liquid.
"Exactly," Tuera said with a smile. "But I think I'm on the verge of creating a body that is, if nothing else, at least closer to what I actually am. And as a result, it requires significantly more biomass."
"How much more?" Phyacair asked with a quirk of one of his hairless-brows. Tuera shrugged.
"Well, if my calculations are correct, each of these Advanced Shells will require biomass rendered down from at least 20 human-sized bodies. Less, if you're able to find me some tauren or ogres," she said simply, coming to a stop in front of one of the many tanks. "The enhanced muscle density alone is responsible for much of that. And not only will these bodies require more raw materials, but they will also need a longer gestation period before they can be safely decanted."
"How much time do the standard Shells require again?" Phyacair asked.
"Roughly 12 hours for each body, give or take," Tuera answered, activating a glowing rune on the console next to the metal tank.
"And, these new Advanced Shells?"
"A little over six days."
Before Phyacair could offer up anything else in response, the top of the tank opened up, and one of the Grimy Goon thugs Phyacair had captured from the alley earlier – one of the orcs – was dropped into the tank. Almost immediately, he started squirming in the murky soup, flailing his arms and legs, trying to claw at the glass, and desperately trying to keep hold of his breath. Then the flailing became even more desperate, once he realized that his skin was starting to flake off.
"And... remind me again why they need to be alive when we drop them in the soup?" Phyacair asked. The two of them watched in silence as the orc continued to flail helplessly, his body swiftly dissolving. He smashed a fist against the glass with a dull thud; a momentary reddish-brown smear was left against the inside of the glass as his fist burst from the impact. Pieces of his swiftly dissolving hand floated off in several different directions.
At first, Tuera said nothing, watching as the movements of the orc got slower and more sluggish as more and more of him dissolved. One of his eyes... well, it didn't so much burst, as it did simply come apart, causing the murky liquid to become even more brown to go along with the other pieces of him falling off.
"Who said they had to be?" she said with a wicked laugh.
Several days later, on the ruined world of Outland...
Lightning streaked across the dark purple clouds of the Netherstorm. Brief glimpses of worlds beyond the membranes of reality could be seen hanging in the sky. Huge pockets of mana hung heavy in the air with nowhere to go, still lingering around the broken and long-dormant Manaforges that dotted these floating asteroids suspended in the void of space.
Several structures stood out among the jagged rocky outcrops and floating mountains hanging forlornly in the air, clinging to nothing: large purple domes, pulsating with energy. Inside each was a lush, verdant landscape, brought back to life by the Consortium through technomancy and science. Inside the largest, however, was the Stormspire: an artificially constructed plateau lying at the heart of the Eco-Dome Sutheron. As far as most on Azeroth were concerned, Stormspire was the headquarters of the Consortium, and where those granted an audience could converse with a hologram of Nexus Prince Haramad.
Tuera, on the other hand, knew better. This wasn't their headquarters... but she could get there from here...
"Are you sure this is wise, Mistress?" Phyacair's voice buzzed in Tuera's head through the communicator. Tuera shrugged, continuing to walk across the blasted and ruined dark purple soil toward her objective.
"I'm going to have to face Haramad eventually, if only to get him off my ass. And turnabout is fair play, after all. He went after my base of operations; it's only fair that I go after his. Besides, this will be the perfect dry-run to see if the Alpha Shells work as intended."
"Is that what we're calling them now?" Phyacair seemed genuinely confused. "I thought 'Advanced Shell' was the name you picked, Mistress."
Tuera let out a heavy sigh of frustration as she passed through the shimmering atmospheric barrier of the Eco-Dome.
"I hadn't honestly given it much thought," she said. "I'll workshop something."
Ahead of her was the elevator leading to the top of Stormspire, and inside the building on the highest point was an Ethereal Gateway; most assumed that it was deactivated, if they even knew what it was at all. Tuera stepped on the platform, and after a brief delay, the lift carried her all the way to the top, where two ethereal guards appeared to be waiting for her.
"What ar-" is all one of them managed to say. A pair of bright green missiles of fel-plasma flew from her outstretched hands. Both guards were struck in the chest simultaneously. There was a bright flash, and the two ethereal guards disintegrated.
In an instant, alarm bells started going off. Civilians started running and screaming; after all, Stormspire was a neutral trading hub. She didn't bother attacking the civilians fleeing and panicking all around her, since they weren't what she was here for. More and more guards appeared from the woodwork and started converging on Tuera, who was casually making her way to the Gateway.
One by one, the guards fell. Tuera was tossing spells in every direction, with the same nonchalant dispassion that one would use to swat a fly. If she had more time to spare, she might try and draw out the fights, but frankly, she had more important things to do than tussle with the groundlings. So, on she walked... calmly, deliberately, leaving a trail of fire and devastation in her wake.
Finally, she found herself outside the main building. She paused in her assault, stopping just long enough to drain the essences of two guards outside, and heard the desperate, panicked pleas from one of the last few ethereals here.
"She's unstoppable!" one of them yelled desperately. "We need reinforcements!"
"Why would I send them, when you have obviously failed so utterly?" Haramad's booming voice echoed, amid a hail of static. "The Gateway is closed, and will not reopen. Consider this your punishment."
"... no! NO!" the ethereal yelled, his mummy-like form shaking uncontrollably as he gripped the holographic console. "You can't be – AUGH!" With a flash, the energy contained within the wrappings exploded, and the burnt cloth wrappings turned to ash. Tuera lowered her still smoking hand, walking into the room until she was face to face with the hologram; the projected image of Haramad towered a good six feet over her. Those who made a habit of communicating with holograms loved to make themselves appear as giants to stroke their own ego, and the Nexus-Prince was obviously no exception.
"Tuera..." the projected image of Haramad grunted out, adjusting his cloak and clearing his throat. "What an unexpected pleasure."
"Drop the coy act," Tuera growled up at him. "You know why I'm here."
"Actually, I really don't..." Haramad said, regaining his usual level of smugness. "The Gateway is closed. I'm not here, and you can't get to me... so, truth be told, I honestly don't understand what you hope to accomplish with this rather pointless and barbaric display."
"And you really think a deactivated Stargate will stop me?" Tuera asked with a nasty snarl. "You should know by now that I can tear open the very fabric of reality on a whim. Otherwise, you wouldn't be so interested in me for all the 'rules' I've broken..." For emphasis, she even made finger-quotes in the air when she said the word.
"Maybe so," Haramad shrugged with a satisfied chuckle. "And maybe you could brute forcethe Gateway into activating, like the simple-minded gorilla you are... but you still don't know my coordinates. And there are only several hundred trillion combinations that you could choose from. I'm sure, given a few thousand years or more, you might get the coordinates right, purely by chance..." Haramad started laughing in earnest. But he did say one last thing, even leaning down as he said it, just to be extra patronizing:
"Have fun with that."
There was a fizzle of static, and the hologram winked out of existence.
"Was that part of the plan, Mistress?" Phyacair's voice buzzed in Tuera's ear.
"Of course it was..." she scoffed, turning to the circular gate off to her left. "I had to make him think he has the upper hand, after all."
Tuera splayed her hands on either side, and dozens of glowing runes appeared almost instantly in the air above her outstretched arms and hands. The hermetic runes, visible only to her, shifted all around her body, spilling off her form and spreading to every surface. Everything the runes touched glowed with an otherworldly iridescence...
She turned her focus on the Gateway; lines of magic and energy danced across the surface, like a swarm of fireflies flying above a still pond at midnight. The hidden glyphs on the gate suddenly became visible to her, and the tendrils of energy connecting each made the sequence to contact the 'point of origin' obvious.
She blinked, and the room seemed to return to normal. She raised her hand to the gate, reached out with her mind, and the gate began to shake as the proper sequence of glyphs was activated. Electricity arced off the edges, striking the walls, floor, and ceiling around it, and Tuera casually stepped off to the side. If it activated the way she was expecting, she didn't want to be anywhere close to directly in front of it...
KAWOOSH!
The burst of unstable energy surged from the surface of the activating gateway, lingering in a shape resembling a horizontal geyser, before pulling itself back. The circular gate became filled with the swirling vortex of an artificial wormhole.
"And now, for the real test..." Tuera said aloud, cracking her knuckles and approaching the watery, whirlpool like surface of the wormhole. "...to see if the signal to control these Shells can reach across interstellar distances."
"And, if it can't, Mistress?" Phyacair's voice buzzed in her ear. Tuera shrugged, igniting the air around her fists in fel-flame and charging head-first at the wormhole.
"Then this is gonna be a real short trip."
At that precise moment, in an entirely different universe...
Tuera emerged through the other side of the wormhole, and found herself in a darkened room, devoid of anything or anyone. The only light seemed to come from the shimmering tear in reality behind her, and her two fists, still alight with energy. And after several seconds, the light from the wormhole disappeared as it faded into nothing, leaving her illuminated only by the sickly green glow of the fel-flame.
"Did it work?" Phyacair's voice, laced with a much more inordinate amount of static than normal, sounded off in her head.
"Well, I'm still here," she said, moving forward cautiously as she began looking around the empty chamber. "So, I think so..."
Bright tendrils of energy escaped from one of her hands, spearing off into the ceiling; they found the lights, and the chamber was illuminated. Every surface was made of the alien metal the ethereals were so fond of, which meant everything was either the color of off-brand bronze or deep purple. There were several bulkhead doors at the far end of the room, of varying sizes.
"If I know our dear Nexus-Prince, I'm on a space station," she said, making her way to the largest of the various doors. "I'll have to check the telemetry later, to determine where I actually am, and even what plane of existence this hunk of metal is occupying..."
And then the alarms started going off.
"Emergency," a vaguely female voice buzzed from a speaker in the ceiling. "Intruder alert. Emergency..."
"And the plan now, Mistress?" Phyacair's voice cracked, unable to hide his worry. Tuera merely laughed, continuing to advance on the door.
"Like I said before, turnabout is fair play. He destroyed my base by letting the dangerous experiments out of their cages, so I shall do the same..." More power was fed into the flames around her hands as she spoke. The fire grew at an exponential rate, until it seemed to consume her entire body. "...and this gives me the chance to test out another spell I've been working on."
"You truly are dedicated to multitasking today, aren't you?" Phyacair asked. Tuera rolled her eyes and ignored him, focusing on the spell.
The flames surrounding her seemed to 'condense' from their state as a superheated gas until they resembled a vaguely human-shaped mass of flowing green superheated plasma. The plasma further solidified in places, hardening into a supernaturally tough stone-like armor that completely encased her entire form. To the untrained eye, she might have resembled a tiny infernal, complete with stray fel magic spilling out of the cracks in the darkened stone. The armor around her feet grew, sprouting massive claws that dug into the metal beneath her, and her hands expanded to become enormous club-like fists of stone. Huge rounded shoulders grew to protect her armored head – which sprouted a pair of pointed horns on either side of her skull. The stone armor around her face was mostly smooth and featureless at first...
And then the stone cracked. Two holes appeared where her eyes should've been, and bright yellow fire burned from within.
By the time she reached the door, the modified 'Stone Body' spell was complete, and she was wearing (or, more accurately, located somewhere inside of) the magical equivalent of powered armor. She analyzed the bulkhead door with her True Sight, pulled back one of her hands into a fist, funneled energy into the limb to alter the mass accordingly, and punched.
The door exploded outward in a torrent of twisted metal shrapnel, sparks, and smoke. The ethereal troops gathered outside – clad in alien metal armor rather than the traditional mummy-wrappings and armed with actual plasma rifles (rather than energy staves), grenades, and goodness knows what else – were momentarily staggered by the exploding door.
"Open fire!" one of the soldiers in front bellowed. A hail of bright purple energy beams cut through the air, slicing through the smoke and ash where the door used to be. Sparks erupted from within the murky haze of smoke, as the plasma bolts exploded against everything they hit. And still, the two brightly glowing yellow eyes continued to burn...
And then, the weapons fire came to an abrupt halt. The dozen or so soldiers all around the door had been rendered instantly silent, as every one of them to a man had been impaled by long, thin spikes erupting out of the ground. When the smoke cleared, it revealed Tuera had plunged one of her fists against the ground, and the spikes had wormed their way through the floor to get at their many targets. She left them there for a second or two, suspended by the carpet of macabre spikes, before pulling her armored hand free. The spikes reversed themselves, returning to the normal shape around her fist, and the now empty armor and weapons clattered to the ruined and broken floor.
"Not even bothering to toy with them, I see," Phyacair's voice buzzed in Tuera's head.
"No," she boomed, her voice amplified into a deep baritone by the armor. She stepped over the discarded gear left behind by the vaporized ethereal troops, each step smashing against the deckplates with a resounding thud. "I need to move fast, and that means no time to waste fooling around with peons like these..."
"HOSTILE DETECTED," a robotic voice bellowed. "ERADICATE." Tuera spun, and was suddenly face-to-face with a massive arcane-powered golem looming over her like a giant. It stared at her with its glowing cyclopean eye, and brought one of its fists – easily ten feet tall – hurtling toward her at meteoric speed. She had just enough time to put her armored hands over her head.
CRUNCH!
The armor managed to keep her from being crushed underneath the golem's fist... but the ground she was standing on was not so lucky. It had become cracked and broken, turning hilariously concave in the process. She channeled energy back into the armored limbs, and pushed off against the metal fist, staggering the giant robot and causing it to take several steps back.
"Well... I guess I can spare a bit of time for you..." Tuera laughed, multicolored fire swirling around her once again.
Half an hour later...
Tuera had been cutting a bloody swath of destruction through the space station. Or, rather, it would've been bloody, if any of the ethereals had blood. Either way, it definitely became clear to Tuera, fairly early on, that this was, indeed, a space station. That much became obvious when she came to a window and was presented with a view of the infinite inky void of deep, deep space beyond.
She couldn't help but laugh. The fact that there was something solid between the inside of this station and the vast expanse of nothing outside meant that it was constructed far more sensibly than the Dreadscar.
The alarm klaxons had become so overwhelming and constant in their droning that she had practically tuned them out. Any time another squad or a robot or a golem came after her and tried to bring her to a halt, she merely shrugged off their attacks. Nothing they threw at her managed to slow her down, and she just kept going, rolling through the fire like a juggernaut on the way to her objective:
The brig.
Sure, she could have gone straight to the reactor powering this technomagic-fuelled space station, and just wrecked the place herself. But there were several reasons she decided against it. The first was that Haramad hadn't sent any superweapons against her yet. It had all been relatively conventional assaults, but if she made it plain what she was really trying to do, she suspected he wouldn't hold them in reserve any more. She might be able to succeed in her objective of destroying this place, sure, but she didn't want to specifically test that right now.
And the other reason? Irony. She wanted Haramad's base to fall the same way the Ashen Citadel had fallen.
The fingers of the armored gauntlets grabbed hold of the double doors leading to the brig, and wrenched them open with a hideous screech of twisting metal and a shower of sparks. She found herself in a chamber very similar to the warehouse underneath her safehouse in Gadgetzan, except much larger, and far more high-tech. The walls were lined with prison cells, locked behind shimmering barriers of energy.
"Let's see what we have here..." Tuera muttered to herself as she walked down the aisle, inspecting each one of the cells as she passed them. The figures inside were completely immobile, indicating that the energy curtains were stasis fields, just like Tuera used.
"Of course," Tuera scoffed with disgust. "What a fucking hypocrite." There was a myriad of creatures within the stasis fields, and almost none of them were native to Azeroth – or even any of the worlds adjacent to Azeroth. There were several xenomorphs, zerg specimens, a cyberman, a half-dozen necromorphs, at least one mancubus, a cell packed to the brim with zombies, several examples of the demons which had invaded the world of Sanctuary several years ago, many different strains of tyranid gaunts, a few Kree... the list just went on and on and on.
As she walked past the many prison cells, she debated which ones she should open. The more specimens she saw, the more she was convinced she should try and pull a "Cabin in the Woods," by unlocking all the cells at once, just to see what would happen.
Then she found a cell in the back, and she was brought to a screeching, grinding halt.
Her blood practically turned to ice, because the silhouette inside was unmistakable. If she didn't know what it was, and what it was capable of, it would have looked ridiculous: like a man-sized pepper shaker, covered in metal that had been painted a mixture of gunmetal grey and matte black. It possessed a single glowing blue eye on a stalk, a toilet plunger for one arm and an egg beater for the other. But she had seen them in action, and she knew this was, unquestionably, the most terrifying creature in this or any other universe.
A Dalek.
"He's... he's insane," Tuera practically whispered, letting out a single terrified giggle. "Even I wouldn't be stupid enough to try and imprison a Dalek! Steal from them when they're not paying attention, sure, but imprison one? That's suicide!" She took several steps away from the cell, and tried to calm her breathing. "Well... if nothing else, at least the stasis field seems to be keeping it immobi –"
The eye stalk on the Dalek swiveled to stare directly at her.
"WHAT THE HELL!?" Tuera shouted, flailing her arms and taking several steps back. Which would've looked ridiculous enough normally, but was further exaggerated by her enormous armored form and altered voice.
The Dalek continued to stare at her; the giant space-dustbin started "pacing" silently around in its cell. Clearly, it was unaffected by whatever time-stop spell or technomancy was powering the stasis field, but it didn't seem to be making any attempts to escape. Maybe it couldn't escape, Tuera thought to herself.
"Well... I guess it's your lucky day..." Tuera said, approaching the energy barrier. The Dalek inside stopped in its pacing, and silently approached the barrier from the other side. The eye never once looked away. "I mean, forget the rest! I just need to let you out, and the job is practically done for me!"
The lights on either side of its dome-head flashed four times: once for every syllable. Even though she couldn't hear it, she knew exactly what it was saying...
Everything was in chaos.
It couldn't have been more than five minutes since she'd set the Dalek free (after making sure she was completely out of sight, and running in the opposite direction as fast as she could), and already the space station was shaking. Explosions were going off, there was a furious racket of terrified screams and desperate shouting, and she could hear the sounds of plasma weapons discharging...
It wasn't until she got a look outside, and saw several dozen flying saucers approaching that she knew this place was doomed. And that was only confirmed when the approaching Daleks started broadcasting a message, overriding every single speaker in the space station:
"EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE! EX-TER-MIN-ATE!"
"Right..." Tuera said; she could barely hear her own voice, over the constant screaming of the immeasurably cross aliens. "I think it's time for me to make my esca-"
BOOM!
One of the Dalek ships had fired, causing a large section of wall very close to her to disintegrate. She barely had enough time to anchor her armored feet to the deck before all of the air – and anything not nailed down – was sucked outside by the vacuum of space. The roar of rushing wind surrounded her entirely, and the pull from the vacuum of space trying to equalize the pressure was almost enough to tear her free.
Well, that makes things a bit simpler, Tuera thought to herself. Even if she said it out loud, the roar of wind was so all-consuming that she wouldn't have been able to hear herself anyway. I can't get to the stargate, so: Plan B. Runes suddenly appeared above her armored hands as she waved them in front of her helmet.
There was a flash of lightning that burst out of the armor's fingertips. A fracture in reality appeared, ringed by crackling lightning. The space around the jagged tear seemed to warp and bloat, like a pot of boiling water. Unlike most of the portals she was used to conjuring, this one seemed much more unstable and distorted than normal. She didn't know if that was because of the chaotic environment threatening to toss her into deep space or because of the sheer distance involved... but she didn't really care. The view on the other side was definitely Azeroth.
She detached herself from the deck, and the rushing wind (not to mention lack of gravity) propelled her forward with incredible speed through the portal. She crossed the event horizon and tumbled out the other side right before the portal collapsed in on itself with a massive explosion.
"Oh dear," she said aloud when she looked around and realized exactly where she was: about a mile in the air, close to the mountain housing the Caverns of Time.
It didn't take long for her to reach the ground.
Once the massive cloud of sand dispersed after the impact, she found herself buried up to the waist by the shifting sands of the desert. The armor had taken the brunt of the impact, and she was relatively unharmed... but also thoroughly stuck.
"Okay..." she said with a tired laugh, willing the armor around her head to peel away. "That wasn't too bad."
Several hours later...
"That was a successful test, wouldn't you say?" Tuera said with a smile. Phyacair nodded his agreement.
"Undoubtedly," he said calmly, tea kettle in hand. "The Alpha Shells – or whatever you end up calling them – seem to be almost indistinguishable from your real self." He paused. "Do you think this will have put an end to the Nexus-Prince's troublesome meddling in your affairs?"
"Oh, absolutely not," she said, calmly sipping at her tea before Phyacair poured her a fresh cup. "But it wasn't meant to. Haramad is just as resourceful as I am, and if I managed to escape, so could he. But this will have put a significant dent in his operations, and will give him something other than me to think about for a while."
"So... all of this was just to give you breathing room?" Phyacair asked. Tuera smiled wickedly from behind her piping hot cup of tea, and nodded.
"When he comes back – and he will, mark my words – we'll be ready..."
Tuera's laughter seemed to echo all throughout her safehouse.
At that very moment, on a rooftop across the street...
"When he comes back – and he will, mark my words – we'll be ready..." Tuera's voice crackled out of a small speaker, amid a hail of static. A shadowy female, wrapped in a cloak magically enchanted to help her blend into her surroundings, listened carefully while feverishly scribbling down notes.
As soon as Tuera's laughter died down, the cloaked figure grabbed the speakerbox, and put it into her cloak alongside the notepad.
"The Shadowblade will definitely want to hear of this development..." she said, adjusting her hood.
A cloud of swirling black smoke appeared at her feet, obscuring her in darkness. There was a sudden breath of wind, the smoke dispersed...
And she was gone.