Netherbane: Returns, Part II

“Awaken, Shazadi,” came a voice of peace. It filled her cold soul with a strange warmth--something she had not experienced in what felt like a lifetime. “Awaken and return to the realm of mortals.”

“Where…” Shazadi’s voice was raspy and dry--it had the sound of a voice that had not been used in many years. “Where am--”

A figure loomed over her. Tall and imposing, this other appeared to be an eredar. He was haloed in a sinister radiance--a light of both comfort and judgement. The brightness washed out everything around them, making it impossible to see where they were. It was a brilliant light. No, it was not just a light, she realized. It was the Light. Upon that realization, the strange warmth left her body. Then not another eredar, no. A draenei. “Who are you?” she asked the silhouette.

“You thought you could escape, didn’t you?” he said. There was enough luminance to see the placid smile on his face--an expression of peaceful disinterest, not one of welcoming or comfort. “You thought to hide from your fate.”

“My fate?” Anger rose up within the eredar woman. She was still too weak to stand, but she sat bolt upright and bore her gaze into that of her overseer’s. “My fate would have been to be reborn in the Twisting Nether and continue to serve!”

The figure’s simple smile never left his face. As a response, he stepped aside, and the source of his radiance became apparent. Above them both hovered a massive crystalline entity--a floating glyph of crystalized Light that hummed and sang as its jagged limbs spun around its speartip heart. A naaru. Shazadi’s lips curled up in a sneer.

“What ‘fate’ do I have with a naaru? Or with you?” She did not mask the implication in her voice.

The draenei dipped his head in a shallow nod, acknowledging her unspoken accusation. “It is not with me, specifically. I am but a messenger.”

Shazadi’s eyes narrowed further as her sneer twisted into a frown. “A messenger for whom?”

“You do not remember me, do you?” The male draenei’s expression changed then. It was a nearly imperceptible change, but it was there. It was not disappointment, as would be suggested by his question. No, it was… “But you do remember my father.”

“Your father?” Shazadi raised one eyebrow over her dubious expression.

“You remember Lord Malfias.” It was not a question, but a statement.

Shazadi’s defiance melted against her opponent’s revelation. Malfias was one of her two patrons in the Burning Legion. For many lifetimes, Shazadi served two masters. For the first, a winged doom lord known as Sraath, Shazadi had served as priestess. She helped to guide both his spirit and the morale of those under his command. She put down insurrections to his power, and restored him to his rightful place at the head of the Legion’s army known as the Shadowed Sun. To the rest of the Burning Legion, Sraath was her master.

The other, however, was Malfias. The eredar lord arguably held more outright power than Sraath could ever achieve. Malfias was the leader of the Burning Legion’s defense against the Outer Gates, and that duty kept him off the front lines of Sargeras’s Burning Crusade. However, the eredar often found ways to influence events away from his station, and Shazadi had been caught up in one of his schemes relatively early. The eredar was a more stable leader than Sraath, and showed none of the seething rage that boiled just below Sraath’s surface. Majority of Shazadi’s efforts in service to the doom lord’s armies was doing damage control in response to his lack of restraint. Between Malfias and Sraath, Malfias was far more pleasant and trustworthy as a leader. She had pledged herself to him rather quickly.

However, though he was a strong and capable leader, he was still an eredar lord within the Burning Legion. He still demanded loyalty and service of his followers, and he would not have voluntarily let go of Shazadi anymore than Sraath would have.

“He was your father? He sent you to resurrect me?” Shazadi’s voice was low with disbelief. “I have no reason to serve him after death.”

The other draenei chuckled. It was an awful sound--amusement laced with judgement. “No. My father is unaware of this meeting. He does not even know of my current… state. However, you served him in your previous life, as did I.” He stepped forward and extended a hand. Whether it was in greeting or assistance, Shazadi could not tell. “I am known as Arcadius, and I am of the Atonai.”

Shazadi pushed to her hooves, ignoring the outstretched hand. Whether it was greeting or assistance, she wanted no part of it. “Atonai? I am unfamiliar with that term.”

“Eredar who seek to atone for their sins against the cosmos.” Arcadius retracted his hand without a change to his expression.

“Atonement? You must be kidding.” Shazadi looked at Arcadius, eyes wide. She snorted in disbelieving amusement. “There is no atonement for what we’ve done. There is only suffering. You should have left me be.”

Arcadius’s head dipped again. Another shallow bow. “That is not your judgement to make, Shazadi.”

Shazadi turned away and waved her hand at the atonai. “It was, once. Before you decided, in your false wisdom, that it was a good idea to bring a soul-shaping eredar back.”

“Your soul was broken, yes. ‘Soul-shaped’, as you indicated.” Arcadius’s placid smile still dominated his expression. Was there amusement in his eyes? Anger? The lack of emotion was getting infuriating. “There was much that needed to be done to even find it, let alone fix what you had wrought.”

“Fix?” Shazadi spun back around to face Arcadius, a scowl targeted at his maddening grin. “What did you do?”

The atonai reached into his silvery robe and produced a simple, square mirror. It was edged in a thin brass frame, but was otherwise unadorned. He held it out to the former eredar priestess. “Look at your eyes, Shazadi. Tell me if you see any remnant of the fel left within you.”

Shazadi snatched the mirror from Arcadius’s hand and stared at her reflection. She was much as she remembered: she had pale, bluish-grey skin, two swept-back horns, and her hair was still the faded blue of an ocean at dusk. Her eyes, though, were different. Instead of the bright green of fel energy, they glowed with a cold luminescence. Wisps of frosty power leaked from the corners, flowing ever-upward and dissipating inches from her face.

“What did you do to me?” she asked, her voice on the verge of trembling.

Arcadius smiled again--that same warmth-less smile. “Were it purely my own effort, I would take such credit, but I merely repaired what you had broken. Folly was it for you to sever your soul without replacing the connection, Shazadi. Do you understand what you risked in doing that?” The other eredar shook his head in disapproval. “It was lucky that you ended up in the Shadowlands like you did.”

Shazadi turned her icy eyes onto him. She stared without responding.

“Or do you not remember?” Arcadius raised an eyebrow, but never changed that smile.

“I.. I remember…” Shazadi frowned. “I remember nothing. And I remember Mifu.”

“You remember nothing because there was nothing to remember. You were on the fringe, near where one realm ends and another begins--where one fades out and the other fades in. As was your mate.” Arcadius motioned in the air, clarifying his words with gestures. “Your souls were made eternal by your own spellwork. I remember your research, Shazadi. My father spoke of you quite often. He kept detailed notes of your discoveries. However, a soul truly eternal still needs to exist somewhere.”

Shazadi’s frown deepened. “You’re saying that, without the Twisting Nether or a proper, final, death, my soul was lost?”

“You did not wish for immortality, but you still had it, yes. In Nowhere. As did your husband.” 

“Did?” Shazadi interjected. “Is he still there?”

“He is. For now.” Then Arcadius’s smile actually faded, his expression becoming more serious. “How long were you there? Do you remember that much?”

“For now?” Shazadi clenched her jaw, anger rising within her. “I do not even know where the fel I am now, or even when. So, no, I don’t know how long I was there, Son of Malfias!” She spit the last few words as a curse.

Shazadi’s outburst did little to phase Arcadius’s calm demeanor. His infuriatingly placid smile returned to his face. He waved a hand, and the luminance surrounding them both faded, revealing a tall cylindrical chamber lined with crystal walls and smoothly sculpted stone accents. “You are in the mirror room of Atonar. Atonar is the home of my people--the Atonai. It is from this place that we travel across the cosmos.”

“This looks like the Exodar, on Azeroth…”

“You remember the Exodar, then?”

“Of course I remember!” Shazadi snapped. “And what the fel is a mirror room?”

“This place reflects a location of our choosing. When in the room, we are both here and not here. We are both there and not there. When I leave, you will be here, in the Exodar, and I will be here, on Atonar.”

Shazadi’s icy gaze narrowed. “You’re not making sense. Do you mean this is some sort of portal?”

Arcadius nodded to her question. “We do not have the ships that the Legion so graciously gave you. We must be more… discreet… in our travels. The mirror room is one of the ways we can achieve that.”

“How did you develop it?”

“We did not,” Arcadius opened his arms and bowed slightly--a gesture of admission. “It was here long before we were here.”

Shazadi spun away from the other eredar and looked at her surroundings, finally able to see it for the first time. It did, indeed, look very much like the Exodar. Specifically, the centralized room in which the naaru, O’ros, once resided. The magenta hue of the crystalline structure glowed and pulsated around her, and it felt… wrong. She did not feel like she belonged here, whether that ‘here’ was on the Exodar or on Atonar. Turning back to Arcadius, Shazadi looked up at the naaru above them. She had never gotten close to O’ros, but had seen it from afar. The entity above them was different enough to be another naaru entirely. It pulsated with a fiery red radiance, and the high-pitched chimes that usually accompanied naaru were instead deep thrums that she felt in her bones more than heard.

After a few moments, Shazadi looked again at Arcadius. “You intend to resurrect me, then drop me in the middle of the Exodar? I am not one of you--I am no ‘Atonai’. What purpose does this even serve?”

“Do you not seek to atone for what you have done? To countless worlds? To your lover? To your children? Do they mean nothing to you?”

Shazadi shoved the square mirror back at Arcadius, resisting the urge to fling it at him. She found herself unwilling to break the glass, regardless of how much she desired to do so. “An eternity of this ‘Nothing’ was to be my atonement. I saved Mifu as best as I could. I gave Saaira a second chance. And Rephaia…”

The former priestess paused, some of the anger bleeding out at the thought of her other daughter. “Rephaia found her resolution in my death--something that you have now taken from her.”

After tucking the small mirror back into his robes, Arcadius gave a slight shrug.

“You realize she will seek me out when she discovers this. She will kill me again.” Shazadi’s anger was quickly draining away, replaced by an empty acceptance of just how broken her family was. She looked up at the naaru again, wondering if such a thing was capable of providing her kind comfort. “Perhaps even Saaira as well.”

“And you find this acceptable? This hatred Rephaia harbors within her heart for you? You would accept an eternity in Nowhere, allowing your daughters to wither away in their separation, the eternal wedge of your action--and inaction--between them?” The atonai raised an eyebrow as he asked. “Or do you desire the opportunity to make it right--to free each one of you?” 

The empty smile on Arcadius’s face made Shazadi want to punch him, and she made it very clear on her expression. “What do you mean? They should have been together. I saw them together.”

“You saw them near each other, Shazadi. That is not ‘together’. Even now they remain apart. One hides away in Outland. The other takes out her aggression on her enemies on a set of remote islands out to sea.” Arcadius pointed in a vague direction behind him, as if indicating where one--or both--of the sisters may have been. It was hard to tell in here, however. “The wedge between them is you. Rephaia, though she killed you, does not believe you truly dead. She believes she knows you better than that. She knew your soul could return, and she feared that you would do so. She has been waiting for that since she struck you down. It haunts her: the possibility of your return. She waits, and it makes her increasingly paranoid and aggressive.”

Shazadi’s frown remained on her face, and she stared at Arcadius as he continued to speak.

“Saaira travels the opposite path, further falling into her self-imposed isolation. She hopes for your return, for guidance from a mother she trusted so dearly that she accepted the fel in your name.”

“You exaggerate to pull on my emotions, priest.” Shazadi’s voice lacked the anger she once felt.

“An eternity of nothing was not your atonement. It was their continued damnation.”

Shazadi closed her eyes. She felt like tears should be forming within them, but they remained dry. She took a deep breath, only to realize that breath was no longer required for her body. “That… was not my intent. My death should have set them free.”

“That is what we all hope, priestess,” Arcadius’s smile actually gained a sliver of warmth to it. It did not make it much better. “That is not always what we achieve. The cosmos often calls us back to make amends.”

“Even so,” Shazadi shook her head, “Rephaia will simply kill me again. There will not be a chance for atonement.”

“If she knows it is you, perhaps.”

“You think lying will make things better? It certainly did not the last time.” Shazadi smirked as she remembered one of her deceptions. One of countless falsehoods she perpetuated throughout her life.

“A lie is only a lie if the speaker does not believe it true.”

Arcadius’s words made Shazadi take a step back. “I do not like the tone in your voice or the implication of your statement.”

The warmth left Arcadius’s smile, and it returned to its former emptiness. “You spoke of it yourself. Rephaia would kill you outright if she knew for certain it was you. But what if that certainty was not there? If you were uncertain about who you were, then she will share that same uncertainty.”

“If you intend to erase my memory, then I will not be me. My atonement would be meaningless. If I don't even know my daughters, then how will I hope to make amends?”

“You speak so certainly of a state that you have yet to experience.” The atonai took a step forward and made a gesture towards Shazadi’s forehead. “You also seem to doubt the precision with which we can act.”

Shazadi took a step back and narrowed her cold eyes. “Explain it to me, before I lose what little patience I have left.”    

Arcadius chuckled at her threat before lowering his hand. “We will allow you to keep your memories, but not as you assume. They will be separated from your mind and stored in an artifact. Keeping this artifact with you will unlock your memories over time. You will still have your purpose, and the artifact will help you remember what that is. When the time is right, the full truth will be given back to you.”

“And what happens then? Do I die once again? Or do I remain as you have remade me?”

“It will be up to the results of your actions to that point, priestess.” Arcadius responded. “Whether you live or die will be in the hands of your family. Think of it as an opportunity, Shazadi: an opportunity to rebuild what you have burned down.”

“And if I keep this artifact with me, what is to stop me from getting someone to retrieve my memories from it before the time is right?”

“If you remember your past life, then you will remember the truth about your actions. You will remember who you are, and your daughters will know as well. You will then face the consequences of that revelation at that time--whether you have rebuilt your family by then or not.”

“You are counting on this me-without-memories to not seek out these answers too early?”

“You will have some memories, Shazadi. We are not removing everything. We will remove just enough to ensure your actions are driven by your heart and not your mind.” Arcadius chuckled at Shazadi’s doubtful expression. “It is your mind that has gotten you into trouble before. I think you can admit this even to yourself.”

Shazadi neglected to comment on that statement. “And if I were to refuse?”

“Then we will keep your soul,” Arcadius replied as he reached behind himself. The sound of something being softly unhooked accompanied the reveal of an item that had been hanging from behind the atonai’s belt. It was a beating heart, discolored and contained in a simple metallic ring. “And your sins will outlive you.”

Shazadi’s eyes locked on the artifact. It was a type of soul chamber, an item used to contain and collect the souls of demons--perhaps of other entities as well. That this one still beat indicated that it had significant power within.

“You will not be alone in there, but I can say that is this not where Mifuune will be.”

“Fine. I will play your little game.” The former priestess turned away from the atonai, knowing all too well the types of bindings used for soul chambers. She had designed a few herself. “I do not care if I die again, anyway.”

“Remember what I said about lies and the speaker’s belief, Shazadi,” Arcadius smiled as she winced. “There is another thing, however, and this is important.”

Shazadi raised an eyebrow and looked at Arcadius again. “And the rest of this was unimportant?”

Ignoring her, the atonai explained. “The body you use now is your own. It is your original. Saaira retrieved it and did her best to preserve it using the blood magic you taught her. Her skill was not as great as yours, so there may be… side effects to the degradation it has already suffered.”

Shazadi placed a hand on her chest and breathed in as she had done before. “I had noticed. I am alive, but… not.”

“Azeroth is a world accustomed to such beings. You will, as they say ‘fit right in’,” Arcadius chuckled.

“I doubt that.” Shazadi frowned at Arcadius’s amusement.

Arcadius returned the beating soul chamber to the hook on the back of his belt before reaching his hands out and touching Shazadi’s forehead. “Forget who you are now, and remember only who you need to be. Leave the Shazadi-That-Was behind, and become…”

Shazadi’s mind exploded as the spell hit with the force of a hammer. She stumbled, but Arcadius’s other hand grasped her arm to keep her steady. Her life, the many thousands of years of it, flashed through her consciousness and blurred together as if being compressed into a singular moment. That moment formed a searing hot pinprick in her mind before vanishing entirely, leaving a fragmented void.

* * *

The woman shook her head, her mind hazy and sluggish. Where was she? Why was she here? Who was she?

“Gloriel,” came a deep voice near her. “I am Arcadius. Welcome to the Exodar.”

Well, that answered two of those questions. “Thank you, but I’m afraid I’m feeling a bit foggy. How… how did I get here?” Gloriel looked around the crystalline chamber with a measure of trepidation.

“You were on the verge of death, but were returned to us by the grace of the Light. Your memory will return in time. Do not worry.”

“Arcadius, was it?” She blinked her eyes. Something felt off about her and the way she moved, but Gloriel assumed it would pass with the disorientation. “Why am I here?”

“This world is still in dire need. I would suggest that you return to it, yes? See what is most needed.” Arcadius explained. “You still have a duty to fulfill.”

“Yes…” Gloriel nodded. Something about that sounded correct, but she was not certain why. “Yes, I suppose I should. I am… I am well enough, then? I do not remember much of my recovery.”

“Well enough, yes,” Arcadius smiled. It was warm and comforting. “You will relearn your limitations soon enough, but do not worry too much about them.”

Gloriel bowed at the response. “Thank you.” She turned to move up the ramp on the other side of the chamber.

“There is one more thing,” Arcadius said as he bowed in response. 

Gloriel stopped and turned back to the larger draenei. “Yes?”

“This is yours,” he replied, reaching into his robe and pulling out a small square mirror. It had a simple brass frame with little ornamentation. 

There was something about it, though. It felt precious, but Gloriel could not understand why. She took it in her hands as if it were a fragile artifact. “What is it?”

“Something as important as your life,” Arcadius replied. His smile was still comforting, and it made Gloriel smile in return. “Now, take that ramp up to the surface. There are many there who will be able to assist you. There is a war still raging, and they can still use soldiers, I think.”

Gloriel nodded, clutching the mirror close. “I will speak with them. Thank you, Arcadius.”The larger draenei bowed as Gloriel turned away. She did not look back to see him vanish.