Cassandra Pendragon

Necromancy. Foul, imperfect, atrocious necromancy. In the broadest sense, true necromancy was a very specialised school of magic that focused solely on the life force and its limits. As such there weren’t many true practitioners. First off, access to and control over your life force was a mandatory requirement, to achieve true mastery even the soul had to be used, and second it was unbelievable difficult. Quite the given, actually, since true necromancers didn’t raise the dead, they changed life in all its complexity. Even a lich was nothing but an amateurish attempt, a cheat, if you so will, used when the caster was either too dumb or too weak and had to resort to keeping a small spark of life hidden and safe while the body ran on tainted energies.

The same held true for mindless puppets like zombies or skeletons, where corpses were used as a mould for a golem of sorts, animated by complex but still pathetic spells. The only real, or higher, undead I knew of were vampires and I couldn’t even tell how much knowledge and power had been needed to create their progenitor. Long story short, necromancy in and of itself wasn’t evil and one of the very few ways I knew of that could lead mortals to transcendence. Genuine un-death and immortality weren’t the same but close enough to generate a transcendent spark.

The actual problems manifested when practitioners realised that they were neither skilful nor powerful enough to walk the path. As soon as they started… meddling, scamping, resorting to shortcuts and cheap tricks, the very nature of their magic turned them into vile mockeries of what a necromancer actually was. Cruelty and stubbornness led them down a path that could only end in suffering, for them as well as their victims, and I had been lucky enough to stumble across a true piece of work.

The Ironhands, even though I didn’t know why, had begun to bolster their lacking strength with the most commonly available and cheapest resource, the life of sentient species. Their suffering, their dreams, their lives… their very existence became fuel to artificially make up for what they lacked. Their nightmares and pain, their hope and love was meticulously distilled into a physical form, a sort of core the family used to achieve greater heights. As for why I knew…

My salivating, mumbling and broken friend had had the good fortune of being blessed with one of their treasures, ensuring that their depraved lieutenant was strong enough to protect them, even against powerful mages. To top it off, the growing seed of despair in his chest was still linked to the unfortunate creatures it feasted upon, slowly devouring their life to fuel him with stolen power.

I’m not going to describe what they had done to the wretched beings he had been logging through the tunnel like pieces of meat but when the memories of his last half hour poured into me like a poison I put an end to his ambitions. Eternally. In the silvery flames that consumed his body his soul burned like a matchstick, writhing and charring while his own strength, as well as the warped, twisted energies from his victims, finally left him. I reached for the cursed tethers that bound them together, my changed wing flared, substituting the crumbling pathways and with a deep groan, reverberating through the tunnel, I pushed it all back, filling the almost empty husks on the wagon with life and hope, but also pain. The pain of a life lost in darkness their mutilated existences hadn’t been able to comprehend… until I plucked them from the abyss and propelled them into a glaring sunrise of agony and freedom.

My teeth ground loudly and I felt tears brimming in my eyes as the muffled moans, torn from raptured throats, turned into howls of pure, undiluted misery, the comprehension of what they had suffered through, what they had become, almost breaking them on the spot. The only thing that might keep them sane, that might allow them to prevail, was the unbridled flood of warming strength I kept pushing through the connection. When the ill begotten stores ran dry, I used my own powers to supplement the waning lifeline, the strand of multicoloured light, that ran from the burning corpse to the wagon, slowly transforming into a roaring river of silver and blue.

An eternity or a heartbeat later the thundering light petered out, silence returned and I found myself standing close to a blackened wagon, my chest heaving, while a cloud of dust danced around my feet before it was carried away by the cold breeze, wafting through the tunnel. I spat at the glowing outline on the ground, where my power had imprinted the last moments of a miserable existence into the unyielding granite, and snarled: “I hope even the memory of you will be erased before the night has run its course.”

Squaring my shoulders I rallied my courage and carefully approached the wagon. I clung to the desperate hope that my actions had been more than a punishment, that I’d find something worth saving, worth protecting, but I simply didn’t know. When I hesitantly peered over the shattered walls of the wagon I couldn’t stop my tears from falling freely.

There they laid, nestled up against one another like puppies searching for a whisper of warmth. Their eyes were empty, their bodies motionless, but a small, relieved smile was playing around their lips. It hadn’t been enough, their hearts had given out, their broken spirits had failed when they had begun to feel again. I bowed my head, a translucent stream running down my cheeks while Ahri’s and my own voice thundered through the grey void that was threatening to drown my thoughts. “They will pay.” Fire and ice, her burning wrath and my own deadly cold fury, mixed and cleared my mind. The earth trembled as I took the first step of a bloody journey. “They will be erased and forgotten within the hour,” we promised.

A thought set the wagon ablaze, cleansing flames devouring the traces of inhumane agony, while my wings extended and slithered back through the trap door, yearning for the sweet lives of the unconscious guards. They wouldn’t wake again. “Keep them occupied on your end,” I said, my thoughts unyielding and icy. “Once I reach the mouth of the tunnel join me.”

“Don’t take too long,” she replied distractedly while most of her concentration was used to keep her from turning into a transcendent wildfire. “They will burn and I’m longing for the flames.” Without another word I raised myself into the air, a glowing, sparkling spider surrounded by a web of transcendent energy, and flew along the tunnel. Gashes, oozing molten rock like blood from a wound, marked my passage and before I knew it I arrived in front of a sturdy steel door, as mighty as the gate to an ancient fortress and covered in runes, the reason why I hadn’t seen the magic. A lazy smile played around my lips and slabs of shredded metal thundered to the ground, the smell of ozone and heat surging like a spring flood. “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” I breathed as I stepped over the tormented, ravaged threshold and into a world of nightmares made real.

The gruesome, macabre scene in front of me froze when my aura flared, a piece of eternity made tangible that held reality in its vicelike grip. Only the quiet, sad song of dripping blood and the agonised rasps of the dying disrupted the almost serene silence just until the sound of aeons torn asunder swelled and, hissing like a swarm of enraged hornets, my wings expanded. An infinite cycle of splendour and might claimed my surroundings, sealing us in hermetically and turning the sturdy foundation of space and time into a vague memory of order long gone. I wasn’t lost, I didn’t drown, in a churning sea of broken concepts and fluttering ideas I was the only pillar, even though the waves of crushing insanity that turned the world upside down were gushing from my wings like an endless river. My cold smile became cruel, the predatory instincts of my race, half forgotten under the strangling constraints of right and wrong, of societal ideals and misguided dreams, were in tune with how I felt for the first time in my life and I didn’t even try to reign them back in.

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A golden nimbus fuelled by the idea of my sister’s magic, surrounded me, the soothing, gentle colour slowly swallowed by a growing flame of deathly cold silver and transcendent blue. My tails quivered, my fur bristled and from one heartbeat to the next I was on all fours, my fangs bared, my claws extended. In a frozen moment, held on the brink between the present and the future, I transformed and chaos incarnate claimed the room when the last laws of creation were torn asunder, their unfathomable weight carried away like a dry leave in a storm.

Before me a dark hall, illuminated by flickering torches and glowing braziers, was frozen like an ant in ember, the pale, panicked faces of a dozen people, rushing from one terrifying tableau of pain to the next, turned into a disgusting still life of human depravity. Wolf kin, humans, members of the cat tribe, lizard men and even a hybrid with huge, white wings on its back, were tied down on tables, their limbs pierced and shatter, just like mine had been in Shassa’s tomb and I still remembered the pain. Some were almost gone, reduced to a barely shivering husk, hollow except for the cruel flame of agony that kept them alive, others were still fighting, trembling and struggling while a huge, rune covered apparatus at the centre tore the life from the terrible wounds the guards were inflicting on them. But be it guard, victim, artefact or magic, they all froze when my powers claimed the pillars of reality and brought them crashing down.

Leisurely, as if I had all the time in the world, which I did, I strolled deeper into the maze of spilled blood and shed tears, my wings a comforting caress for those who suffered and a suffocating vice for those who revelled in the atrocities they were committing. “I am the wrath of god and if you hadn’t sinned, god wouldn’t have set me upon you,” I intoned, echoing the words of a man I had killed myself. Maybe I shouldn’t have. “You are past redemption, your souls are stained forever and the reckoning is nigh.” Each syllable shook the foundations we all stood on, made them tremble and despair like a frightened animal but I didn’t relent, I only redouble my grip and held the frayed edges together with nothing but my will.

In silent, frozen panic the human monsters watched as the strongest, the cruelest among them, the younger heir to the Ironhands, turned into crimson mist, his essence, his soul laid bare, a scintillating shadow of what he once had been, smothered under a miasma of stolen dreams. I inhaled deeply, breathing in more than just air, and he was gone. Lightning raced through my fur, my tails turned into rivers of molten silver and my wings vanished back into my skin, a maze of glaring, silvery blue veins that formed sigils on my body the likes of which this world hadn’t seen since Amazeroth had changed Gaya and brought on the cataclysm. If it haven’t been for my own powers, confining my energy to this single moment, to this single space, the wards around our world would have melted like ice in a furnace, but as it stood, I could do whatever the fuck I wanted and what I wanted was carnage. I wanted to make each and every one of those perverted reflections of humanity feel what they had done before the end and I wanted their end to be... remarkable.

“Agony,” I whispered caressingly, my gaze burning with transcendent flames, and even though time stood still I saw the changes in one of the guards as the torments he had inflicted over a lifetime became nothing more than a gentle memory, incomparable to the infinite abyss that swallowed him whole. He broke, even his soul started to crack under the pressure. But his I wouldn’t take. Five, five would perish eternally tonight. Two already had. Only the mother, the older son and the patriarch were left. With a derisive sneer I let go and his life ended when his soul fled blindly, carrying a mark that would haunt it forever. I turned to face his master, the last heir of the family.

Another wave of ozone surged, a ramified flash of light tore through the frozen scene behind me and the remaining guards became smouldering corpses, silvery sparks filling the holes in their chests where their hearts should have been. I tilted my head, long, silvery whiskers quivering in the storms of a crumbling reality, my tongue lolled from my mouth as I tasted despair, broken dreams and just a tinge of hope on the horizon, and then I pounced.

It wasn’t graceful, it wasn’t controlled, but it was final. The runes on my skin swirled, the maelstrom of power collapsed back into me, my wings tore free from my body and I landed, panting heavily, on his chest, my hand buried deep in his flesh. The fluttering caress of his beating heart, ephemeral and fleeting as it cut itself to pieces against my claws, felt almost intimate and when a stream of blood gushed from his mouth, I knew the world was back to normal. Dull thuds behind me signalled wherever a corpse had finally fallen to the ground and the cacophonous music of tortured moans and fearful whimpers resumed.

Sighing, I leaned back, the silvery mist that had enveloped me once again already dispersing, and tore the handful of dead meat free, carefully keeping the flimsy connections intact that poured ever more pain, ever more strength into the hard, warm pearl I felt between my fingers. “The Lady of the house is on the second floor,” I sent calmly. “Bring her here. She will be judged by her victims, as will her husband. Their children and their most faithful servant are gone… forever.” Ahri didn’t reply but just as I felt a last convulsion race through the body under me a surge of heat touched my back and the silvery landscaped I had delved into as soon as I had reached the door lit up with crimson flames. It didn’t last longer than half a heartbeat but I was still convinced that the mansion had turned into smouldering rubble above my head.

I tightened my grip and closed my eyes, shattering the reservoir of stolen life, and felt the energy return to where it belonged. I already knew it wouldn’t be enough. A scarce few of the unwilling donors would maybe manage to return to the light but for most of them the merciful darkness that already loomed above them was the only way out. When the stores had finally been depleted I used my own power to supplement the flow until I heard the first rattling breath of the dying and a single, steady heartbeat behind me. At least one would survive.

Gradually I rose back up, unable or unwilling to turn around and face the aftermath of what they… of what we had done. I knew enough about myself to realise that I wouldn’t be able to do what was necessary, to do what I had promised, if I became lost in the atrocious sights and there was still another door to be broken, another vault to be raided, another life… another soul to be taken.

I extended my hand and opened my eyes again, their silvery sheen mirrored in a wave of translucent light that flooded through the room and turned the smell of blood and violence, of pain and despair into ash and memories. Cold, unyielding sparks travelled along Aiglos’ shaft, as if the weapon itself was longing to finally taste battle again, to wash away the memories of its last defeat with the blood of the guilty. It shook ever so slightly in my hand, urging me to move, to allow it to devour and cut, to burn and tear, and when my gaze settled on the hidden door, barring the way to the inner sanctum, its defences already breaking under the weight of my stare, a warm, gentle breeze ruffle my hair.

Ahri had appeared at my side, her wings extended, her multicoloured eyes ablaze with transcendent flames. She dropped the wriggling body she was carrying to the ground and struck out. A tired sigh escaped broken lips and the elderly woman became still, only her wounds kept oozing blood where they hadn’t turned into charcoal.