Thought and memory had been seared from her mind; nothing existed before that moment.
She was tumbling through a searing, crimson sky toward a crazily broken landscape, with wide rivers of blood coursing between bursts of smoky fire and seething pustules of lava. Lightning crackled through the soot-stained air. Iron chains hung, still-living bodies suspended across gaping chasms, and agonized screams flowed and echoed against raucous, demonic laughter.
Rusting, razor-sharp hooks reached hungrily for her flesh as she fell; she closed her eyes in dread of the approaching agony...
... but instead, she became aware of a dull, repetitive sound in the darkness; a liquid, echoing thud-thud, pulling her exhausted mind away from the horrific scene. Desperately, she focused on the sound, and willed herself toward it.
Countless times, she despaired that she was making any progress; she knew that if she opened her eyes again, the hooks and the screams would be there, waiting for her. She felt no hope, just grim determination.
But after an ageless struggle, the darkness suddenly began to pale. It was pierced by a widening slash of painful light, which dimmed - agonizingly slowly - and resolved itself into the ceiling of the Magister's stone-walled chamber.
Instinctually, she took a ragged breath, and the smells of burnt flesh and wood demanded her attention. Then the realization of that breath struck her, and consciousness snapped home. Memory flooded in.
She was alive! She had won!
At first, she couldn't move; her body seemed made of lead.
But Zanien was still out there. She forced a finger to twitch, the wrist to turn, then the forearm to scrape, inch by inch, across the debris-laden floor. Every muscle, every motion, required concentration and determination, as if she was controlling a reluctant puppet with knotted strings. Steadily, she levered herself up to a sitting position, the blood hammering in her ears. Finally, her head and vision began to clear, and she could take stock of her surroundings.
Dense smoke and flickering flame loomed close to her. Her Abyssal Hunter was gone, and Zanien remained crumpled on the floor where he had fallen. Painstakingly, she crawled over to him, tearing her robe and skin on broken furniture and shards of glass. Gently, she felt for his pulse, finding it erratic.
At the soft contact, his eyes slowly opened and focused on her face. She gave him an encouraging smile, but the room was burning more actively now. They had to get out before they were overwhelmed by smoke and flame... and before the guards arrived. She didn't speak as she helped him to his feet, taking some of his weight with an arm over her shoulders. The pair staggered out of the room and down the hall.
As they moved through the relative quiet of the spire's lower halls, she heard him try to whisper, but it was interrupted by a series of pained coughs. She slowed their already-sluggish progress to let him catch his breath. Finally, he was able to reform his question:
"Tali, is she really gone?"
She nodded mutely, not trusting her voice. Crazy images of the Twisting Nether, seared into her mind during the mental battle, swam in her vision.
Zanien grimaced. "Well, at least that's something, then."
From there, she let him take the lead, while still supporting his steps. They progressed down a series of twisting passages and through forgotten storage areas, taking turns seemingly at random, until they arrived at a staircase that took them up into a hidden alleyway several streets away from the Spire.
Slowly, Zanien was recovering from his ordeal with the Abyssal Hunter. True to form, he began to seethe and grumble about her performance during the fight.
"Stupid girl! What were you thinking, summoning a Hunter? You knew she was adept at controlling demons. You could have used half a dozen different spells to distract her while my spell took hold on her form. And what about that other undead idiot? Did you make sure he was destroyed before you dragged me out of there? If he talks..."
She took his rants wordlessly, assisting him calmly each time he stumbled.
Finally they arrived at a concealed doorway at the back of a building. Zanien waved his hand through a complex pattern, disarming the locking wards. He shouldered his way through the door, pulling her through as well, then relocked it behind them.
"There, we're home. But we have no time to waste. Go get ready and meet me upstairs."
She glanced around the room. To the uninitiated eye, it would appear to be a normal mage's chambers, crammed full of books and arcane paraphernalia, all of it scattered about as if in use by a brilliant, distracted mind. But she could pick out the dark undertones; the ritual daggers, the summoning skulls, the vials of demonic ichor.
She headed up the stairs, following Zanien. The top level of the building was windowless and solidly built from stone and wood; it was here that he had constructed the summoning circle. She found him hurrying around the room, setting up incense and inscribing runes into the lines on the floor. He glanced up as she stepped off the stairs, and frowned. "Why aren't you ready? I told you..."
She finally gave words to her anger; let the emotion twist her face into a snarl. "Because I've seen enough to prove that it wasn't me who killed the Magister. And I know those runes, though poor Talionia probably didn't. You were planning to sacrifice her next."
His eyes widened as he realized her deception, but she didn't give him time to act on the knowledge. Necri's power lashed out in a torrent of flames, blasting him away from the circle and into the stone wall. She followed it with a burst of cold, freezing him in place.
While he struggled uselessly against the icy bonds, she ran her gaze across the books he had stored around the room. Several of them bore the seal of the Forsaken. "These ones are stolen, I have no doubt," she said without looking over her shoulder. "Too bad you didn't know better how to use them."
"You have no idea what you're dealing with here!" he spat at her.
Necri kept her tone neutral, almost disinterested. "Don't I? Your bindings are weak, your control questionable. You let your ego and your emotions dominate your castings. It's only a matter of time before the demons are running you, rather than the other way around."
An otherworldly growl alerted her that something was amiss. She whirled around to see Zanien bathed in bright green flames that instantly flashed her ice into steam. As he surged away from the wall, ragged wings unfurled from his torn robe. Horns burst from his forehead, and his fingers twisted into serrated claws. The demonic form was taller and more muscular than Zanien had been, and its feet were cloven hooves.
She sighed. "On the other hand, it seems that's already happened."
She wished she had been able to pick up her scythe from the Magister's room, but she had known it would draw Zanien's suspicion. Now she had little with which to counter its physical attacks.
A pair of arrows zipped through the air, burying themselves in the demon-Elf's chest. At the top of the stairs, Ranger-Captain Jaela faded out of the shadows, her face set in utter loathing. "I saw and heard everything, you monster! We followed you from the Spire - we know what your plans are!"
The attack didn't seem to actually harm the creature much, but Jaela's accusations provided a brief distraction; enough that Necri was able to summon her magic. More ice and fire leapt from her palms, staggering the demon and tearing rents into its dark flesh. It howled and surged toward her with arms outstretched, but its claws closed on open air as she teleported across the room. Again, she blasted it with bolts of energy, and was forced to blink away when it lunged at her.
Necri could see that her spells were paining the creature, but the wounds to its flesh were mostly superficial. Jaela's arrows, though striking deeply, had no magical strength behind them, and therefore only had limited effect.
A plan suddenly came to her. It would need the demon to be slowed down - if she tried to get in close now, it would rip her to shreds before she could react. She shouted to Jaela, "don't shoot to kill - just cripple it! Slow it down!"
In answer, a storm of arrows flew from the captain's bow, targeting the demon's knees, shoulders, and elbows. The last shot pierced one of its hateful eyes, finally attracting its attention away from Necri.
Exactly as she had hoped.
The creature was moving slower now, though its ichor would quickly heal the mundane wounds if nothing more was done. It swept around and staggered toward Jaela, acidic spittle spraying carelessly from its fanged maw.
It barely had time to twitch when Necri teleported behind it, though it started to twist around when she yanked the ritual dagger out from her sleeve. She'd taken it from downstairs, against just such a possibility. The words she shouted in the demonic tongue echoed obscenely in the small room: "Ko'tar'i yo'tal gh'ehen!"
The dagger plunged into the demon's back with hardly a whisper.
Its agonized scream was cut short as its essence imploded through the blade and into Necri's aura. It was nowhere near as powerful as the Shivarra, and Necri didn't experience the expanded sensory or telepathic awareness she had received from the more powerful demon. Still, the empowerment sang its song in her magic, a latent fire that settled into her aura.
In front of her, Zanien's Elven form slumped to the ground. The dagger and all of Jaela's arrows still protruded from his flesh. His blood, once again red, flowed out over the circle he had so carefully etched into the floor.
His pulse, when Necri checked it, was silent.
Jaela lowered her bow, but her eyes never left Necri's face. "You're the undead mage, correct? Not Zanien's girl."
Necri nodded, stepping away from the dead Elf.
Jaela continued. "I saw what happened, back at the Spire. I watched them destroy you, but you fought back, and you took her body." She closed her eyes and shuddered, obviously sickened by the thought. "I can't blame you for doing that, though I think it best if you left the city as soon as possible."
"He was trying to force me to kill Vol'jin." It was a pleasure to not have to whisper anymore.
"I know. I heard the two of them talking on the balcony. I don't know how much the Warchief or anyone else knows about this, but with all of it, on top of the Magister's death... even with my testimony..."
Necri finished the ranger's sentence; "...it would be best if I were never seen."
"Exactly. As much as you can hardly be blamed for what you did, nobody will be comfortable with the idea of someone who can... take over bodies."
Necri knew that there was no sense in trying to explain the theory and circumstances behind her curse, or the Banshee's powers. The Elves who investigated and judged the events would have the same visceral reaction as Jaela had. Revulsion and fear would certainly overcome reason.
It was Strom, all over again.
"Then I thank you for understanding. I will leave voluntarily." Necri stepped past Jaela and descended the stairs. She waited at the bottom, until she heard the ranger step across the floor, likely investigating Zanien's corpse for herself. Quickly, Necri made a pass around the cluttered main room. She claimed a silver ritual dagger, and found a traveling pack and some of Talionia's spare clothes in a wardrobe.
Meanwhile, her mind churned over places she could go. Strom wouldn't accept a Blood Elf any more than they would one of the Forsaken, so that wasn't an option. Nor did she yet feel comfortable approaching the Banshee Queen in her new body - especially considering that Sylvanas maintained a connection to Silvermoon through Ambassador Sunsorrow.
She remembered the Goblin-run zeppelins outside Undercity. She had no idea of their destinations, but it was somewhere to start. She had a world to discover.
She brought her hands up and summoned her magic for the teleport spell.
-END-