章 174: Staying Busy with the Shadows
5/27 Lunch
I sat down with Natalie and gave her one of the Supply Fruits. It was the most calorie and nutrient dense thing I had, and she hadn't eaten in more than a decade. I filled her in on what I knew about after her death. Most of my historical knowledge was based around Warcraft 3, also known as The Third War, and later, so I was pretty well equipped to tell her broad strokes about the zombie apocalypse, the demon invasion, the discovery of another continent, the tenuous peace with the orcs and trolls (her old enemies) after a short team up against the demons, and the fact that the only people who had preserved the majority of her teachings were the free willed zombies that currently occupied the desecrated ruins of Lordaeron. It was a lot for her to take in.
Natalie was pretty relieved to shift lanes to the amulets and my own personal experiences over the last month. It had insane implications, but was still relatively localized and could be approached as a series of fascinating topics related to her own area of expertise. She was, after all, innately committed to the cause now. The strangest moment was when she looked into the middle distance for a few minutes before nodding. "Alright. Original identity won't like it, but she would still accept this arrangement over several other hypothetical options. If she returns to this body before she is captured, I don't think she is going to try to kill you. Maybe try to influence your morality, but given your defenses she will probably just try to debate you." Shrug. "I literally cannot countenance you being objectively wrong about anything right now, thanks to my mistress imprinting awe and adoration upon me, but the original thinks you're a bit free with magically controlling allies."
"The original self that was almost killed in her sleep by her own students?"
The bishop shrugged noncommittally. "I find that persuasive, but I'm also entirely your creature. None of my opinions really carry much weight, will they?"
"So do you have multiple personalities or something?"
"Well that's one way to put it. I suppose so, when I want them, but my true self is always in control. They are smaller, imperfect copies of myself. Well, I suppose I am also a smaller, imperfect copy of myself right now. If the true Bishop Natalie returns, I will be unable to stop her from regaining control. I suppose then I will have multiple personalities, since one will be me and one will be her."
"I'll probably just have the ghost… er… you? Leave at that point. So… why the hell did you learn how to do this? Obviously it seems useful, but I want to hear you explain it."
"Using my mind as a weapon necessitated learning how to repair any chipping, and once you know how something works it's only natural to experiment. It's much easier to maintain a shadow word when you can partition off the part of you that is disabling itself, for example."
She smiled at me, but the description of shadow priests dancing on the edge of madness sounded quite a bit less hyperbolic now. I still wanted to learn how to use this power, of course. I might not go all in on it like Natalie seemed to, but mind vision alone was way too good to pass up on.
"Does that hurt? It can't be healthy."
"Too much alcohol in one sitting can kill a man too, and every species on Azeroth drinks it. Moderation is important, but if you know your limits the power of the void is quite a bit more useful than alcohol. My mind is in absolute peak condition; always. As elastic as when I was a child, and as resistant to supernatural influences as anything."
I found myself regretting that I didn't actually read her book. Of course, I was also picking up the implications of everything she said much faster verbally than I probably would have from the book. Drusilla, my first teacher of shadow magic in the form of curses, had seen it as a somewhat dangerous tool to use; she thought of it's applications and ignored its implications. Sadie saw it as a dangerous, evil force that she could twist towards the service of the light. Natalie saw it for what it, cosmically speaking, really was: the counterpoint to the light. No more or less evil or dangerous in its undiluted state than the kind of light that the Scarlet Crusade swung around freely.
When Sadie arrived, the lunchtime lesson focused on philosophy and the underlying mechanics of the light and shadow. Both, by Natalie's understanding, fundamentally operated on a kind of deranged irrationality. Where the light hyper fixated upon a desired reality, the shadow embraced everything that didn't literally exist.
The mind, one's understanding of the world, served as a kind of cap on an endless torrent of void energy. Most things that didn't exist could partially exist in the world as thoughts. Ideas, concepts that you toy with for a moment and then release back to oblivion. Each shadow word opened up a hole in the soul and let void energy flow through it, shaped by the form the hole took. The abstract idea of pain, or infatuation, or fear, or even death introduced where it doesn't really exist. Alternatively, imagining a connection and pulling it into reality, to link two minds together, for example, or letting someone's anxieties take physical form.
Mental attacks would take the form of a torrent of alien intrusive thoughts, just opening up a hole and letting a pressurized stream of things that didn't exist directly at the mind and soul of your target. Everything from how the world would be different if 2+2 equaled 5 to the taste of the color yellow. Those were the most simple and intuitive method of attack Natalie could teach me. Almost all primarily within the realm of the mind; it was possible to create a corrosive blast of nonexistence, but that was far easier for the more pragmatically minded warlocks of the world to pull off. They could think of raw void as just another kind of matter or energy, instead of an affront to the concept of objective reality itself, and conjure a sphere of it to throw.
Shadow priests had a much more intimate understanding. They could release a pressurized blast of nonexistence, but doing so required that they break their mind enough to get it out of the way. I didn't actually learn any new spells that day, but assembling a framework for how it all worked made so much just click into place. I could use Pain, at least. Anyone who's ever been hurt badly enough could use Pain.
Sadie, for her part, was not overwhelmingly receptive. She knew the theory. She understood the concepts. But she didn't want any more dark power than she already had, thanks. She had progressed fully; she could summon nightmares and would teach me how to do the same, but actually damaging people's souls was where she drew the line. I let her; I try not to get in the habit of fundamentally changing people's sense of morality unless I really have to.
My mind was spinning when I left for my hunter training with Caledra. The plan for today was to practice firing my bow under pressure, and maybe start learning some magical shots. It went reasonably well, I'd say. At first I was pretty humbled, but after a few hours my accuracy was as good while running around and blinking as it had been while standing perfectly still yesterday. Doubled martial talent was serving me well; almost a shame that the plan was to capture Sylvannas today.
I decided to maximize my time at full ranger boot camp, so I resolved to spend the next several hours on learning everything that Caledra had to teach me. I largely skipped most of the offensive melee techniques hunters use; I already knew how to hit people incredibly hard without emulating a mongoose or raptor. The defensive technique of heightening my reflexes by channeling the spirit of a monkey, on the other hand, was more than welcome.
We transitioned to on the job training, hunting worgen, and I once again made full use of blink to engage with the wolfmen. They weren't even trying to fight the Farstriders anymore. Most of a week of getting utterly styled on by an invading force will do that, I suppose. Our biggest concern at this point was that the worgen were massing in larger and larger numbers.
When I got humanoid tracking down, we were able to get a much better count on the worgen by virtue of me teleporting around to do a headcount. Nearly 300 of them were massing together in packs of 30-50; rallying together and moving towards Raven Hill. It wasn't exactly hard to figure out what was happening here. they were ready for war to save their comrades. Comrades that would be their primary opponents if they did make this assault, given that I was using them as guards. Couldn't have that; my side would certainly win, but at the cost of dozens of lives. Even with Sally on call, that wasn't trivial; she had her limits and was still recovering from the fight with Taerar.
I ran the numbers on our own side. 51 worgen captured; 6 with shrooms, 45 by Talaada and me. Another 31 were in the cellars awaiting processing, so I only actually needed to catch and capture 18 more. I didn't particularly love the idea of slaughtering a bunch of people that were essentially possessed farmers, so our strategy was going to be focused primarily on capture with a secondary objective of scaring them off. The keystone of the plan would be Emeriss who, as a giant fuckoff dragon that can summon clouds of sleep gas, would contribute nicely to both sides of the operation.
Unfortunately, she was out on assignment right this very moment, doing two missions at the same time no less. It didn't look like the worgen were going to attack before nightfall, so I focused on building up our defenses in case they did. Fortifying Raven Hill was just good sense if it was going to remain my prison, which it probably would until I built a base dedicated to holding and processing captives while feeding me energy from the prison guards and "recruitment" team. Maybe in Feralas, that's nice and remote; Twilight Grove was the priority for now, though.
In the meantime, Natalie and I practiced on the worgen we had prisoner. She had extremely little stamina when it came to her spells, so we only managed to capture two before she couldn't mind control anyone else. Over a few hours we worked through another 12, mostly with the help of the ghostly trainees, who listened attentively as Natalie explained shadow magic to them. My day, after I split off from the Gates, was actually kind of boring in retrospect.
Thankfully, everyone else was keeping busy.
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