No Rest for the Wicked - Mal'garr Firefist's Restless Death

[Tideraider]

Reading the recaps of the current guild campaign, specifically it's focus on a Wolf Spirit whose role is to direct the spirits of dead members of the clan to their rest, made me realize something. Other than briefly showing in a small event that Mal'garr's spirit was now serving Zul'garr's peculiar "Lady of the Abyss", I'd made no effort to actually explain how or why that happened. So, I've decided to write a few short scenes covering...well, what happened to Mal'garr's spirit after his death, how it came to serve Zul'garr's peculiar patron, and give some insight into the actual nature of the Lady of the Abyss that Zul'garr worships!

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The deck rocked gently beneath the elderly warlock. All around him the Orcs were moving, tending the wounded, sailing the ship, trying to come to terms with what had just happened. Mal’garr paid them very little mind. He was laid flat on the deck. He knew he should be weighed down by his armour, but he could barely feel it. He knew his legs should have been paining him, as they had been for decades, but he simply couldn’t feel them at all. His chest felt heavy, it burned. He could feel that his breathing was watery and difficult, and with each exhalation he brought up fluid. It was blackish. He assumed it was his blood. He assumed he was dying. Nar’thak had tried to heal him, but it had come to nothing. Okiba was by his side speaking to him, but the elderly warlock barely heard. He could feel the life leaving his body, strength leaving him, the red demonic light dimming in his eyes.

He used what little strength he still had to turn his head to face Okiba, forcing out words in spite of the blood and bile that accompanied them, befouling his long grey beard.

“Okiba, look after my staff for me. I don’t want it going overboard, and I don’t think I can carry it anymore.” He released his grip on the black iron staff, given to him in his youth as a gift when he had first completed his training and become a Shaman. He opened his hand, and let his staff fall to the ground. He trusted that Okiba would do as he had asked.
Mal’garr was broken, tired, and old. So very old, he had lived far longer than any Orc had any right to, extending his crippled half-life at the cost of the lives of others, many more deserving of their lives than he had ever been of his. Despite his fervent efforts to avoid death at all costs, the old fiend was surprised to find he felt no fear of it when its certainty faced him.  After a life as twisted as that which he had lived, Mal’garr felt as if he would appreciate a rest. He closed his eyes, his breathing slowed, and the fel light in his eyes died completely. Darkness took his mind, and he fell out of the world.

Mal’garr awoke. He did not know how much time had passed, only that it had. His entire body burned and ached. He had hoped that in the afterlife he would be free of the physical afflictions he suffered from, but he felt worse now than he ever had. He pushed himself to his feet, feeling his legs struggle under his weight as they had always done, but feeling his body sting and burn as he shifted.

He stood now on what looked almost like a desert, and expanse of sand stretching out for quite some distance in all directions, broken up only by the occasional rock dotting the surface. He did not recognize this place. It was alien, and utterly devoid of life, and most notably, entirely colourless. Everything around him was dull and grey.

When looking around him gained him nothing, the warlock craned his eyes upwards…and saw the underside of a boat, floating alone in sky. He reached out for it almost instinctively with his left hand…but was forced to stop when he caught sight of his hand. It was…fleshless, entirely. Nothing more than a clawed skeletal hand sitting on the end of an exposed skeletal wrist. His eyes followed down his arm, up to his shoulder, and across his torso. His flesh had been burned away, leaving bare his warped bones, lined with glowing veins which he knew would have been green had the colour not been sucked out of the world.

He turned his head, to look at the other side of him, and found it much as he remembered it, fleshy, decrepit, and clad in his armoured robes. In the centre of his form, where bone and flesh met, he found the only colour he could see any more. Crystalline shards of deep purple embedded messily into his flesh. He recognized them as the remnants of soulstones.

Movement caught the Warlock’s eye. He turned his head to the sky again, and saw a body slowly falling towards the earth, surrounded by the remnants of what appeared to be a raft. He moved towards it quickly, ignoring the pain wracking his form. As he drew closer, he could make out who the body had belonged to. He saw himself falling slowly, charred and burned, a half-skeletal nightmare, buffeted by a current he couldn’t see.

He knew why he had never seen this place before. He was stood on the floor of the ocean, far below the boat on which his clan was escaping. They had attempted to burn his body, as was right, but had neglected to take from his corpse the bag of reagents and crystals he needed to perform his fel arts. As his body burned, it must have exploded, and the ruination of his body by mystical means had reflected upon his spirit in death. He searched for a while, as the ship moved away, trying to find his staff. It seemed it had not gone overboard with his body. He was thankful that Okiba had obeyed his final request.

He was dead and he presumed he was standing in the Shadowlands, the place to which souls which have not or have yet to be claimed by a greater power are damned. He had hoped that by swearing himself to the clan, and by dying in its service, he would perhaps have managed to redeem himself somewhat. To have earned some rest, some peace. The deafening silence told him otherwise. His spirit was abandoned, lost to the deep ocean, left to wander for eternity until either some foul entity ripped him from the Shadowlands for some foul purpose or until he went mad.

He could no longer see the ship which carried the Red Blades home, but he could make out its wake in the surface of the water he had originally mistaken for the sky. Having nowhere else to go, Mal’garr began walking after it, hoping that the wake would lead him to Kalimdor. If he was to be damned to walk the world unseen and unheard, he would rather walk the lands his people called home.

[Okiba]

Das is good writing!

...Interested to see where this goes   

[Tideraider]

Mal’garr walked. He had been walking for quite some time, but he wasn’t sure precisely how much time had passed. Trapped as he was at the bottom of the ocean, in a colourless void bereft of life and light, it seemed as if no time at all had passed. The only sign that he was getting anywhere was the occasional ‘landmark’ he would pass. An oddly shaped boulder, a sunken wreck, some long-abandoned bones. He felt as if he had been wandering for an eternity.

He worried he was in a kind of hell, but a hell of the dreadfully mundane. To his mind this was in many ways worse than the torment and suffering he had imagined himself damned to. At least in that there was some drama, some theatricality to being torn apart by the demons he had enslaved. Some justice in being tormented by the specters of the innocent lives he had taken. That would have been…something. Instead, he simply walked alone. His entire body ached, his age pressing on him like it never had in life. The silence around him was deafening, even his own heavy footfalls made no sound. His robes and hair moved as if he was under water, floating eerily around him as he marched forward, but he couldn't feel the water’s pull or resistance.

He began to understand just how it was that the souls left abandoned to the Shadowlands became as twisted and violent as he had been led to believe. It was the silence, and the loneliness. The utter isolation and the despair of knowing it would never end, the powerlessness of knowing they could not save themselves.

He was left alone with his thoughts as he marched endlessly across the sea floor. Despite knowing what he was, and the things he had done, the elderly warlock couldn't help but feel a sense of betrayal as he walked. According to the Red Blade Clan, orcs sworn to the clan could be granted a place with the ancestors when they passed. He had sworn himself to the Clan, after serving them for no inconsiderable amount of time. More even than that, his death had come as a sacrifice. He had subjected himself to the Blight in an effort to burn it away, making the escape of the others that much more likely. He had traded his life so that they would have a greater hope of escape. Was his sacrifice rewarded? No. He had been abandoned, to an eternity of wandering to be twisted by time and go mad, and if he ever should escape from this empty hell he would be branded an abomination and driven back!

The old warlock felt hurt, abandoned, and betrayed, but more than anything he simply felt hollow. It seemed the colourless void had robbed him even of the passion that could drive him to a rage. Not that there was even anyone at which to rage. He was quite alone now, or so he believed.

More time passed in the timeless ocean, and Mal’garr felt…something. He felt eyes on him, a presence watching him. It would have made his blood run cold, if he still had flesh. He turned to glance behind him but saw nothing. He knew turning was a mistake, and that he had almost certainly now lost his way, but he did not believe he would ever see land again regardless. He stared out at the open ocean, scanning the horizon for movement. He saw nothing, but strangely…he heard.

From behind him he could hear the rattling of chains, then first sound he had heard in what seemed like an eternity. He turned once more, to face the sound, and was faced with a sight he had not expected. Before him, stands what seems to be a fog bank, but he knows he is under the water, such a sight should not be possible. Within the fog bank is the figure of a woman. It looks to be a human woman but…the size of her! She stands far larger than any human Mal’garr has ever seen, and she holds herself with the pride of some primal warrior of old. The chains rattle once more, and the Warlock sees the source of the sound. Seven sets of ethereal chains snake out from the fog bank, moving gradually towards him, seeming to manifest out of the very mist itself!

A voice speaks wordlessly in his mind, making promises and threats in his thoughts. He is adrift, it says, abandoned and unprotected. He has been given up by those he knew in life, cast away and disregarded. He has no home, no place to go to. All that waits him is misery, and madness. The voice speaks to him of another way as the chains draw closer. It claims that she was drawn to him, drawn to his blood by her child and his. She offers him a place on her crew, a place of honour, a purpose. He could never have the rest he craved, the voice whispered, but in her service there would at least be purpose, and the madness could be held at bay. The voice begged him to kneel to the Lady of the Abyss, and to do so willingly. If he knelt, he would be honoured among her crew of the lost and damned. If he refused, it spoke, she would claim him regardless and he would suffer for it.

The chains were almost upon him now. The Old Warlock had sworn many years ago that he would not be another creature’s slave, but it seemed he now had no choice. With a shivering form he knelt in the pale sand, kneeling before the Lady of the Abyss. A deep laughter resounded around him, as the chains coiled around his ethereal form. He, and his new Lady, both sunk slowly into the sand of the ocean floor.

[Tideraider]

It has been some time. Mal'garr is unsure as to exactly how long. Time doesn't seem to move in this place. Rather it seems to simply drag on and on. The chains that pulled him into this place remain, wrapped around his spectral form, winding through his robes and into his exposed skeleton. At times they weigh him down. At others, they pull at him and force his movements against his will like a puppet on strings. The colourlessness of the Shadowlands is gone in this place, replaced with a deep and murky blue. It's impossible to see more than ten feet in any direction. It is cold down here. Very cold.

All around him, Mal'garr can hear the cries and groans of other souls held beneath the waves. Occasionally he catches glimpses of them as bolts of lightning tear through the water around him born from an impossible storm that brews constantly overhead. Souls from almost every species on Azeroth wander and toil in the dark, each bound in chains just like him. Some chains are heavier than others, those slaves of seemingly greater importance are granted greater freedom, but ultimately they are all shackled and kept, owned by their Lady.

Some of the souls sift through and sort piles of gold and jewels, a vast trove of wealth taken from countless piratical raids and sunken ships. Others work tirelessly at forges made from the rotting hulks of ruined vessels, burning with unnatural blue flames, to craft ugly objects from crude iron working some foul magic into them, and sending them back to the surface.

Separate from it all, but above everything, sits the Lady, on a throne made from the ruins of Vrykul longships. She smiles, cruel satisfaction on her lips as she looks over her world of slaves and ships. Somewhere far above, a bell tolls. She makes eye contact with Mal'garr, and he feels himself pulled back into the sand once again.

He appears on the shoreline, clutching a staff topped with a rusting, water-logged bell. An Orc he does not know stands before him, speaking in a thick Human accent. The orc is foreign to him, but the face is terribly familiar. It seems that Mal'garr was not the last of his family after all. Behind the younger Firefist stand others. The Blackrock who broke crippled him so many years ago. The irritating Soothsayer, the shadowy assassin, and the one-eyed Monk. One of those at least is his friend. He is not able to control his own actions, not properly. He tries to speak but only a rattling laugh leaves his throat. He goes through the motions that his new Lady requires of him for whatever rite is being performed though he understands nothing. Before he leaves, he draws the Monk's attention. He is able to do something, he hopes it will perhaps inform him that something is wrong. In Mal'garr's hand is a prayer bead, burned and charred. The Monk had left it with him as he passed on. He hands the bead back to the Monk. The monk does not understand, and Mal'garr is pulled by the chains back into the ocean. Back to his servitude.