Grim Views

OOC Note: The original story of the Apparatus can be found here. The story was never finished, but you can read about the Apparatus's origins.

She hadn't returned to this room since that day, years ago, when she had sacrificed an old friend in order to stabilize herself. The adjustment period had been rough, certainly, but eventually she had incorporated the soul into her own body and found clarity once again. The Apparatus had burned itself out in the process, but she was confident in her own skills. Some replacement of basic parts, and the creation of new foci to power the necessary transmogrifications, were all that she needed to prove her dedication to the Grim once and for all.

"Yaros. Begin moving these boxes to the carts. We have a long trip ahead of us." As the voidlord moved to comply with its orders, Malethia began the delicate process of disassembling the larger components for the move. Though she may theoretically have been able to complete her task here in her lab, she felt the chances of success to be better in Pandaria. After all, the place had a unique type of emotional magic that seemed to enhance her own abilities.

If this was going to work, if this was going to successfully complete the exacting precision Malethia needed to pull off the sacrifice without sacrificing everything, it was going to have to be done in Pandaria. As her voidlord continued to load the carts, Malethia marched out to yell at the goblins about yet another delay in loading her rented ship.

The bitter cold of the Storm Peaks hardly bothered a woman whose very core generated blistering flame. The wind whipped her robe back and forth as her mount landed in the drifting snow, which promptly melted beneath her feet as she dismounted. Confidently, she strode through the ancient archway into the facility beyond.

As expected, the Titan-constructed defenders strode forth to defend their charges, as they had been programmed to do countless millennia ago. A few waves of her hands, and the mechagnomes exploded into slag. Their simple designs were unable to withstand her magic, leaving the Library wide open.

She had been drawn to the Inventor's Library in the past, when she had found old mechanical designs in the remains of some Titan guardian. Several databanks inside could be accessed via a library console, which allowed hundreds upon hundreds of lost devices to be displayed upon its surface. She strode to its command board, starting the search for what she was looking for.

It took a few hours of digging, but she finally found the proper blueprint. Contained within the Ulduar databanks was a design for the purifiers used in Pandaria. WIth deft fingers, Malethia manipulated the plans, changing a circuit here and a node there. It didn't take long until she supposed she was as close as she could hope to get. WIth a few more buttons, she sent the design over to the Prototype Console for manufacturing.

While she waited, her mind wandered towards recent conversations she'd had with the other Grim. Conversations about her role with the Grim, her history, her present. She had gone from a passionate, expressive girl during her original stint with the guild to the cold, hateful woman she was now. Had she really gone too far is shutting herself away from her brighter side?

She could still have several centuries in front of her. Centuries of blood and war to come. It would be a long, isolated existence if she maintained her current robotic personality. The soul within her, still bright and shining despite her imprisonment, had vitality aplenty to offer. Her planned sacrifice aside, she could still seek companionship, even friendship, without letting her emotions run out of control.

Balance. She needed balance. Perhaps this sacrifice was the first step she needed to control the most extreme of her urges and become normalized.

A ding brought her out of her thoughts as the console opened and a conical device emerged from its depths. Malethia carefully took the emotional extractor in both hands, carrying it to her waiting mount outside. If this object worked as she hoped it might, she would be "purified" of her weakness in short order.

The night always felt more alive to her than the day. Her fires were brighter at night, her senses more alive, more aware – the old superstitions of inferior creatures, that the night was a thing to be feared, had crafted her nighttime senses into things of imagination and half-truths.

There were guards out there, certainly, but they were busy with distractions. A group of demons and engineered toys were on the other side of the village, causing as much noise and destruction as could be managed. An inexpensive sacrifice for such a valuable prize.

Despite her intellectual knowledge that the guards were away, her blinded senses insisted that every noise and half-seen shadow was a Vindicator waiting to pulp her. Her body reacted in kind, sluggishly making its way through the domed buildings towards her target. She was no rogue certainly, at home in the dark.

There. The soft cry gave the correct home away. Like her own endangered people, the birth of a child had become a rare and treasured event. Even half a world and a warring faction away, it was simple enough to hear of the news. The guards in Shattrath liked to gossip.

She crept through the veil that served as a door, ritual knife in hand. The child was in its manger, being comforted by its mother. Its mother, who now picked up her babe and clutched it to her warm chest, letting her scent and warmth calm the child, like only a mother’s love could.

Malethia struck, claiming her prize at its most powerful.

She took the child from the stricken arms of its mother, returning it to the crib – more out of fear of discovery than any sense of wellbeing. Still, even as she now was, she couldn’t bring herself to slaughter an innocent babe. She talked to it as she began her grisly harvest, knowing full well both age and language prevented understanding.

“This night will shape your entire life, you know. I hope you will grow knowing only vengeance in your heart. Perhaps one day you will learn who I am, and end me. You think you will know peace at that point, but it is a lie.” She stood, preserving the freshly-stolen heart, filled with a mother’s love, within an arcane container of crystal.

“There is no peace. There is only pain, and hatred, and an endless cycle of retaliation. I hope I have saved you from the disappointment of thinking that happiness is possible.”

She slipped out of the home and into the night, leaving behind a baby crying over the corpse of its murdered mother.

A lesson learned. The allies she had been slowly drawing closer, the ones she had hoped to trust enough to protect her in her moment of vulnerability, had abandoned her. Fair enough. It was a reminder once again that the only one she could truly trust was herself.

Consider it a test. You’ll just have to push through the pain to survive.

The Apparatus had been reassembled atop a remote spire in the wilderness of Pandaria. Stacks of crates, hauled up to the spire via gyrocopter after the journey by ship and wagon, now sat to the side as she performed the final adjustments on the device. The various demons in her employ stood by as well, their tasks complete. Though hardly trustworthy, they were bound to her will and would serve as her last line of defense.

Only if they must. This is my test, not theirs.

As always, the Apparatus consisted of two tubes, situated several feet apart and connected at their tops by arcane devices. The bulk of the device was now elevated by balloon into the stormy skies above, a particular piece of ingenuity inspired by the Pandarens. The lightning would flow down the wire to the Titan device, which would transmute the pure energy of nature into the magical form she required. From there, it would flow through the draenic heart, thus obtaining the resonance necessary. The Rod was the final component, aligned to separate instead of combine.

Malethia stood alone in one of the cylinders, preparing herself for the struggle to come shortly. The other was empty, soon to be filled with whatever form her physically manifested sense of love would take. A teleportation circle was ready to shift her out of the cylinder before she could be trapped inside. The healing power of stolen soul energy hung in a locket around her neck. Only her hearthstone, which she had formed into a set of earrings for easier communication, had been removed.

One deep breath. She had prepared for this moment for a month now. Two deep breaths. She was ready, and now was the time to excise this wound once and for all. Three deep breaths. She pressed the activation button.

There was a flash of white lightning, then everything went black.

“Is this a joke?”

She blinked, trying to clear her head, which was screaming in pain. She groaned, trying to recall how she’d ended up on the ground.

“Get up. I’m not going to fight you when you can’t even stand.”

That was her own voice. Was she talking to herself?

She tried to focus her vision. The screaming pain in her head remained, blurring her sight. There was someone standing in front of her, clad in plate armor by the appearance of the boots. Breathing deeply, she sat back on her haunches and tried to concentrate.

“Still there? Good. I want my life back.”

Malethia’s eyes went wide, everything suddenly snapping back into place. She was still within the Apparatus chamber. She was also very much in danger, as a swordswoman bearing a rosy-crystal sword stood above her.

“Are you the pathetic thing I’ve become? Given in to pain and loss, and ended up as this? Father would be disappointed. Don’t even get me started on what mother would say.”

She looked as she had when all of Azeroth had united against the Burning Crusade. She was strong. Vivacious. Beautiful inside and out. Nothing like the hollow, empty creature who had emerged from the Cataclysm.

Malethia Blazestone, Paladin of the Light, had returned.

“Consider this a merciful execution.” The paladin’s sword swung down. With but a thought, the warlock vanished and the sword hit nothing but air and the bottom of the chamber. The paladin spun, then screamed as her flesh ignited.

“Am I supposed to be afraid of you? Or be crippled by remorse as my crimes return to me?” She slapped a palm forward, a lance of pure heat blasting into her younger counterpart.

“You’re supposed to be better than this! Crippled by loss? Addicted to your own pain and suffering? This was never your destiny!” The paladin braced herself against the blistering flame and charged, sparks of holy power flashing across her skin.

The warlock scrambled, barely avoiding the intended deathblow. She was weak, crippled by the ripping of her being. This paladin, this reflection of her past, was gaining strength by the moment.

She would NOT allow that to be some sort of lesson.

“My destiny died in the fires of Blazestone Manor. It died with my mother and father. And YOU –“ She pointed her own sword, forged from the essence of fear itself, at her doppelganger “-you are but a costume I wore for far too long. I should have learned my lesson, but instead I stubbornly clung to this notion that love and kindness could somehow win the day.”

The paladin snorted. “Love? Kindness? You never understood either. You used both as hooks, grasping at anyone who would pay attention to you. You were so full of loathing and hatred for yourself that you desperately clung to anyone who showed even the most remote interest in you! Of course nobody loved you! Of course they all abandoned you!” She readied her weapon once again. “How could they love you when you could never love yourself?”

The warlock was trembling now, tears blinding her in her fury. “SHUT. UP!” She screamed, waves of fire slamming one after the other into the paladin. The other woman staggered, giving ground until she was nearly at the edge of the spire. “ENOUGH!” A bubble of pure holy power surrounded her, and she threw her blade at the warlock. It spun through the air, transforming into energy itself.

The warlock, lost in her fury, never saw it through the flames of rage enveloping her. The weapon struck, piercing her heart, and she screamed in pain and anger as she was blasted to the ground, pinned by the glowing blade to the grassy turf beneath her.

The paladin walked forward and knelt beside her future incarnation, the anger on her face replaced by pity at the dying woman’s agony. “I wish this could have ended differently. I wish I could have brought you back to the Light… but you’re too far gone. You’ve allowed yourself to be lost to pain and fear. I will grant you final peace, and take your place in order to repair all the damage you’ve caused.”

The paladin leaned forward, intending to kiss the warlock upon the forehead. At the last moment the stricken woman’s eyes shot open, as she grabbed her counterpart by the back of her head.

“Burn.”

They kissed, and as their lips met the warlock filled her old self – this manifestation of love, more likely, taking her own form – with unending waves of hellfire. The paladin screamed, struggling to escape, but the warlock held tight, strengthened by the desperate strength of the dying. All the pain in her heart, sundered by this sword of love, spilled into her killer.

The edges of her vision grew dark as one final scream filled the air, and the pressure of the other woman atop her disappeared into a cloud of ash. With one final look at the blade pinning her to the ground, Malethia – the one, true Malethia, even as her life poured into the grass at her back – felt everything slip away.

The storm had passed. The day looked to be rapidly approaching dusk. She groaned, sitting up as a wave of pain washed over her. Eyes suddenly wide, she rushed to undo the top of her robes and stared down at her bared chest – of the wound that had crippled her, there was no sign. Next to her, resting on the ground, was a rosy-colored crystal sword. The tip was cracked off, leaving fractures spreading through the rest of the blade. She had wondered if it had been a hallucination, but the sword was physical proof of the fight. Perhaps that was the form the “Sha” of love had taken, with the doppelganger wielder simply an illusionary form.

She glared over at the gathered demons as she covered herself back up. “You lot are horrifically useless.” If a floating sphere could shrug, the observer did so, and without orders the whole group turned to begin the process of disassembling the Apparatus.

“Leave me the heart. It should be useless now anyways.” Her imp waddled over, carrying a glass cube containing a smoking lump of charred muscle. She took it, placing it beside the broken sword as she pulled out parchment and ink.

To the High Inquisitor:

Please find within the attached package the results of my sacrificial experiment. My goal was to purge myself of the emotion of love, which for too long has ruled my path in my desperation for acceptance.

The crystal box contains a reagent from my experiment, the heart of a draenei mother. It was consumed in the process, but I offer its remains to you as a keepsake, perhaps. Or, you may see that as foolish and dispose of it. As you see fit.

Also contained within the package is a crystal sword. This appears to be what remains of a creature spawned from my own emotions. Much like the Sha of Pandaria, this creature was the physical manifestation of a powerful emotion, forcefully drawn from my body by the power of science. After a fierce battle, I managed to defeat the creature, and have seemed to suffer no permanent backlash as a result.

I believe this sacrifice prepares me to serve the Grim with a focus I once lacked. No longer will my despicable need for affection pull me away from my duties. Let this broken sword serve as my symbol of dedication to the Mandate.

She stuffed the heart and sword into a box, and placed the letter on top. The package was then stuffed into the mailbox that spawned from a tiny box she threw on the ground, teleported to wherever the goblins ran their mail system.

Rubbing her chest to dull the ache – real or imaginary – from her “wound”, Malethia gazed out over the scenic view of Pandaria below her. Truth be told, she felt better than she had in a long time. She felt pretty good, really. Perhaps today was the start of a new life.

[[ Bravo. ]]

Syreena read the letter and then examined the items.

"Aw look, Ber, she sent you a snack," the rogue giggled. She set the crystal box with the heart on the floor for the worg runt before reaching for parchment and pen to write a response.

Malethia,

Congratulations! You have passed your trials. I am somewhat surprised.

Attend an Office Hours meeting this month for your promotion. If you can't make the times, let me know, and I'll grant you your promotion without an audience.

Peace,
Syreena Shadowblade
High Inquisitor of The Grim