Hello again, everyone! I've finally gathered the motivation to start writing again after a long break. Fingers crossed I'm not too rusty!
If you've read Frigid Death(on SB), this fic will have a similar vibe. My main goals are to dive deeper into the mechanics of Warcraft's Death magic and, most importantly, rewrite the lore that was completely butchered during the Shadowlands expansion.
Please don't hesitate to leave constructive criticism, I'd love to hear your thoughts. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoy it !
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The Maw.
It was the ultimate dumping ground for the absolute worst scum the universe had ever spat out. Hidden deep within the many realms of the Shadowlands, it housed torturers so vile their cruelty rivaled even the demons of the Burning Legion.
For eons, this wasteland had been the very definition of endless despair and torment, ever since the Arbiter fell from grace and claimed the title of the Jailer.
Hope didn't exist here, it was a dead concept
"What a shitty place."
Normally, the system had rules. A soul only ended up burning in the Maw after being weighed, measured, and judged by the Eternal Ones as completely beyond redemption. You had to earn your ticket to this hell.
But rules, it seemed, didn't apply to everyone.
This particular soul never even got the luxury of a trial.
He used to be just a regular young man back on Earth. But somehow, after simply closing his eyes for the night, he had woken up as a Mawsworn.
Now, he found himself wandering the endless, oppressive halls of Torghast. The agonizing shrieks of tortured souls echoed off the cold iron walls, bouncing from every direction and drilling straight into his skull.
'They were never this creepy in the game,' he thought, wincing as he tried to block the horrifying noise from his ears.
He glanced at the Soul Seeker hovering dutifully to his right.
"Which cell again?" he asked.
His voice came out hollow and heavily distorted, filtered through the dark, imposing suit of armor he was trapped in. The unnatural, metallic echo irked him to no end, a constant reminder of his new reality, but he made sure not to let his frustration show.
"Cell 674571," the floating construct replied.
He didn't even bother acknowledging the answer. He simply kept walking, his heavy, armored strides ringing out against the cold stone of the corridor.
He passed by hundreds of his fellow Mawsworn along the way. Not a single one spared him a glance, nor did he offer them one.
After an excruciatingly long walk, he finally reached his destination. Grabbing the heavy iron lever beside the cell, he pulled it down with a loud, echoing clank.
The thick door swung open, revealing the prisoner inside.
It was a soul belonging to a race he didn't even recognize. The creature looked like some bizarre, massive hybrid between a minotaur and a horse. It was absolutely gigantic, so huge that it easily dwarfed his own hulking suit of Mawsworn armor.
He turned his helmeted head back toward the floating Seeker, silently demanding the details of what exactly he was supposed to do with this giant.
"Target identified," the construct droned in its cold, emotionless voice. "The Excalord of the world of Kronon, Laron Joyi."
The Seeker paused for a fraction of a second before rattling off the charges.
"His sins are as follows: Genocide. Patricide. The systematic torture of millions for mere entertainment. And the mass consumption of innocent souls to fuel his own dark magic."
He paused, staring up at the colossal soul.
The beast glared right back at him, its massive eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred. It opened its jaws to roar, or perhaps to curse him, but not a single sound came out. Jagged, glowing runes were seared deeply into its spectral throat, acting as a gag and silencing the monster completely.
"Vorath," the floating eye droned, finally using the name he had been assigned in this hellhole. "Harvest his anima. Report to the Floor Master afterward."
With those final, cold instructions, the Seeker turned and drifted back out into the corridor, leaving him entirely alone with the towering giant.
Vorath just stood there, watching Laron. His heavy, helmeted face betrayed absolutely no emotion.
"You truly are a piece of work," he muttered.
He walked slowly toward the stone wall and pulled free a jagged spear. The dark metal was heavily etched with glowing runes, a language he still couldn't read, but he knew exactly what the weapon was meant to do.
"I actually felt pity for souls like you at first," Vorath said, stepping back in front of the towering Excalord. He tilted his head. "Can you believe that? Pity."
He let out a scoff that echoed like a harsh, metallic snort through his armor. Then, without another word, he drove the spear brutally straight into the genocidal monster's chest.
The giant writhed in agony, throwing its massive head back in a violent, desperate roar that remained completely silenced by the glowing runes on its throat.
"Pity for a genocidal maniac like you?"
He tightened his grip on the heavy shaft and violently wrenched the spear free. The massive beast slumped forward, granted a brief, agonizing moment of respite as it gasped silently for air.
Vorath glanced down at his weapon. The faint, swirling mist of anima clinging to the runic blade was pitiful. It wasn't nearly enough to satisfy the Floor Master.
He was going to have to dig deeper.
And so, he dug deeper.
For what felt like hours, he methodically broke the giant down. He worked the beast over and over until the spear was practically humming, heavy and saturated with harvested anima. Only then did the greedy runes along the dark metal finally stop glowing in hunger.
Stepping out of the cell and locking the heavy door behind him, Vorath felt a familiar, creeping void settle into his chest. He felt completely hollow. A mere shell of the man he used to be.
Back on Earth, in his past life, he could never have imagined torturing another being. The very thought would have made him sick.
But things are different now. He had learned exactly what happened to Mawsworn who failed to meet the Jailer's daily quota.
He knew the punishments far too well.
He found the Seeker waiting for him just outside the cell. Its single, unblinking eye tracked his every move, never once letting him out of its sight.
"Let's go," Vorath muttered mechanically, already turning his back on the creature to head toward the Floor Master's quarters.
Back on Earth, seeing and navigating Torghast through his PC monitor hadn't done this place justice in the slightest. A flat screen simply couldn't capture the sheer, oppressive scale of it. In reality, the cursed tower was a maddening, impossible labyrinth of broken bridges, endless stairs, stacked cells, and twisting hallways that seemed to defy all logic.
But the worst part? The tower wasn't just designed to break the prisoners. It was built to punish the jailers, too.
That was exactly why Torghast was almost completely void of portals or teleportation devices. Every agonizingly long walk to a cell was a deliberate torment for the Mawsworn themselves. It was a constant, grueling reminder that they were all subject to the Jailer's twisted designs.
In the end, the torturers were just as trapped as the souls they tortured.
The office of the Third Floor Master was just as painfully bland as the rest of the tower.
A massive, unadorned desk carved from a single slab of jagged black stone sat in the center of the room. Behind it stood a few skeletal iron shelves, completely devoid of books but crammed with rattling soul-gems and heavy chains.
Across the rest of the massive chamber, hundreds of stone pedestals were aligned in perfect, maddening symmetry. Above each one, a runic spear floated in wait, glowing with harvested anima, ready for the necromancer to extract.
Despite his lofty title, Deathspeaker Yutla was nothing more than a trapped soul. He was just another prisoner caught in the Jailer's grand design, exactly like Vorath.
The ancient-looking necromancer was already busy when Vorath walked in, meticulously extracting anima from a glowing spear another Mawsworn had just dropped off.
Hearing the heavy, metallic footsteps of another torturer entering the room, Yutla didn't even bother to tear his eyes away from his work.
"Vorath," the Deathspeaker rasped, his voice dry as dust. "Leave the spear on the pedestal. Then get back to work."
He did exactly as instructed.
Reaching out, he positioned the heavy weapon above the stone pedestal. Instantly, the runes etched into the room flared to life, their dark magic grabbing hold of the spear and leaving it suspended in mid-air with a low hum.
Vorath didn't spare the ancient necromancer a second glance. He simply turned on his heels and headed straight for the exit.
"Cell 458819," the Seeker droned the very second he crossed the threshold back into the corridor.
Vorath paused. He tilted his helmeted head back, staring up into the endless, oppressive gloom of the tower's ceiling.
"You truly are a cruel master," he muttered to no one in particular.
He let the words hang in the cold air, half-expecting a reaction, some acknowledgment from the god-like entity he knew was always watching him through the Seeker's unblinking eye.
But no answer came. Only the suffocating agony of Torghast.
Vorath let out a hollow snort and kept walking, his steps resuming their endless march toward the next cell.
Just like last time, he pulled the heavy iron lever. And just like last time, the thick door swung open to reveal a prisoner of another completely alien species.
The Seeker hovered at his shoulder "Sins are as follows: Defiling of sacred idols. Mass murder. The use of Fel magic that resulted in summoning the Burning Legion to his homeworld."
Vorath didn't even blink behind his dark visor.
He simply drew a fresh runic spear from the wall and went to work, methodically harvesting the monster's anima without uttering a single word.
He stepped out of the cold cell and mechanically started his walk back toward the office once again.
"Have you not considered my bargain?" a dark, rumbling voice suddenly echoed from the Seeker.
Vorath stopped dead in his tracks. If he still needed to breathe, his lungs would have seized completely. The sheer, monstrous pressure radiating from the floating eye was absolutely suffocating.
"I have," Vorath replied, his distorted voice flat and resolute. "And I refuse it again."
"Pity."
Just like that, the crushing weight in the air vanished, and the oppressive presence receded from the Seeker, leaving behind only the cold silence of the hallway.
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Hope you enjoyed
See you soon :)