5/27 late morning
I had gotten a very interesting little list yesterday evening. Millstipe had done exactly as ordered and collected the names of everyone magically noteworthy buried near Darkshire. There were a few dozen such names, mostly pretty old or not actually all that impressive, but three stood out. Nielas Aran, Natalie Seline, Medihv Aran. All were exciting, but Natalie was the most convenient of the three to go and grab.
Natalie was the founder of the Cult of Forgotten Shadow. It hadn't really taken off, outside of the adoption of a few socially acceptable shadow words like Pain and Fade, until Forsaken priests had discovered the excruciating pain of channeling the light as an undead. The Light didn't really reject them, as some Forsaken claimed. It would come when they called, but the light is antithetical to the death magic animating them, and feeling pain every time you cast a spell makes it easy to lose faith. To make things worse, it would try to heal them as they channeled it. I don't know if this would still be a problem for female undead in this version of the world, seeing as they emulate a lot of the aspects of life in the name of being hot, but at least males would get the lovely experience of having all of their exposed nerve endings reactivate at once, feeling the rot in their organs and the worms under their skin.
Shadow magic was similar enough to holy for the skills to be transferable, and the philosophy of self-reliance and setting your own rules of morality really resonated with the Forsaken community. Natalie had been murdered by her own followers long before that, and I think I remembered something about her having a magic knife with a sexy voice at some point. Xal'atath is a whole other can of worms. In short, if I ever find that knife I'm going to put it into my time stopped inventory until I can stamp it, but the moment I have it captured, and thus trustworthy, I'm never putting it down.
In any event, by Warcraft logic she was almost certainly at least on par with Aelthalyste, probably superior, and Tara might be able to resurrect her as a Forsaken style undead, who we could then capture. If not, she could be animated and used as a new body for Abby; Lillibeth was ready to spread her wings, I think.
Importantly, she was the first up because she was the only one in Raven Hill Cemetary. We had the name and number for the plot, so it was easy to find. Quite close to the Ladimore graves, actually. Lucky me, that's probably what kept Morbent Fel away. I'm pretty sure he'd have prioritized the grave of a bishop even without knowing her full story.
A few skeletons with shovels dug up the body expeditiously, and the box was still mostly intact. What we found inside was a surprise on multiple levels. Two things struck me: first, this was an incredibly fresh corpse, she just looked like she was sleeping. Second, after I checked to make sure we dug up the right plot, was that she was drastically blacker than I was expecting.
https://imgur.com/a/NASYb89
Don't take that the wrong way. In my head, Natalie Seline looked very different. For some reason I had a very clear image of a vaguely Latin American or maybe Arabic woman with a bob cut. Combine that with the fact that in retrospect I haven't seen many black people since I got to Azeroth, and it made me do a double take. I looked the incredibly well preserved corpse up and down, and came to the conclusion that it was not a change I was upset with. Just confused.
"Alright Tara. Do your thing."
The Val'kyr approached the open coffin, and her lips twisted into a frown. "I cannot, my lord. This body is not dead."
"Not dead? She's been sealed in an airtight box for more than a decade." I looked her over. "That's a stab wound!"
"And yet she lives." Came the placid reply.
"Huh. Well, if that's the case, Abby, do you want to do the honors or should we bring in one of the trainees?"
Lillibeth's demeanor shifted and she shook her head. "For some reason, this feels like a trap. Send one of the pawns instead."
Melisara sent us one of her shadows, one who was showing only modest promise. The silent silhouette looked down at the woman as we placed a ghost hair necklace around its neck to match the one we put on Seline herself.
••••••••••
The spirit was lost in the flow of the powerful mind of Natalie. There was no soul to contest him, but the simple miller's own thoughts felt so small and distant compared to those that he could prompt from the brain he was coming to inhabit. He'd hardly even been aware of his name before entering, and flowed like water into a mold. Her master had been wise to place a formless one into this body. She could be Natalie now, using the knowledge Natalie had. It was better than being no one.
Natalie opened her eyes; there was a searing pain in her side from the dagger wound. The will sapping poison still flowed through her veins; she hadn't used her suspended animation spell before the betrayal. It had been highly experimental, and from the looks of things hadn't worked quite right. She'd been rendered unkillable, but apparently also unable to awaken herself.
The poison and long torpor had left her body too weak to survive a shadow mending, but Natalie had been a bishop before she had even seen shadow magic. Light, so anemic compared to what she'd once been capable of, flowed out to heal her. Not enough. Not nearly enough.
Her lord healed her. The different parts of her mind warred between awe that he would so much as look at her, cynical amusement at his amateurish use of the light, and appreciation for the life saving treatment. The appreciation, shared by her mind and soul, rose to the forefront as she unsteadily stood.
"Thanks. You are… well. My Mistress's master, anyway. And so you are mine." She was an extension of the mistress, but Natalie was not slavishly devoted to anyone. She would die without flinching at the mistress's command, and would kill herself if it would please him, but the identity she was just starting to grow into would not debase herself as a matter of course. Obedience, even absolute obedience, did not require obsequiousness.
"Got it in one. So, are there two of you in there?"
"No. As of right now I am reworking the soul animating my body into a reasonable facsimile of my true self so as to serve you more efficiently. It has a painfully limited understanding of the process of capture, incidentally. Oh, yes. Charm." She forked her mind before starting the dangerous shadow word at its greatest strength. It wouldn't do to reduce them both to lovesick fools without a way to sever the connection.
As her breath began to hitch, she smiled at this perfect man and let him know how she felt as she melted into his arms. "I love you. I'm so glad that you will be my master from now on." The fork, noting no physical shift, even her damn side was still sore, severed the charm. Natalie did not move out of his arms immediately; both sides of her liked the contact far more than she was expecting. "Hmm. Requires the original ego to be active, then? Shame. I hope there's a backup plan; this soul has access to my knowledge but not my power." She spoke clinically into his chest, arms still around him and enjoying his scent.
Her master seemed thrown off, but recovered enough to follow her line of logic. "You seem awfully cavalier about not having your own soul." Ah good, he noticed. He's not a dunce then; it would have been unfortunate to have to shred her own taste in men so that she could properly love him.
Natalie shrugged. "This one will do. I've shattered and rebuilt myself dozens of times. Usually not from scratch, but I have the blueprints memorized. I assume you'll need some people killed at some point? I'll absorb some of their souls, if that's alright." Her master seemed like a reasonable sort, and she was used to having a soul of a certain size and potency.
••••••••••
I have no clue what the fuck happened here but I like it. According to her profile, Natalie is the full 7 days from actually being captured, even while possessed, wearing a necklace of her own, and actively doing my bidding. I guess she cultivated quite a lot of resistance to outside mental influence while dabbling in the powers of the old gods. When I looked for Ivan Agamand, the ghost we tapped for this experiment, I didn't find him. I found Natalie Seline (copy). Good call, Abby. The copy was still only tier four, but it's self identity shifted enough to have the priest and female tags now.
The other two graves were unfortunately in Deadwind Pass, near Karazhan. The necromancers, with Corpse Party in tow, would go and do their grave robbing without me later. First, we all had something to do together. I'd sent one of my drakes to the territory of the Bloodfeather Harpies, using Xylinnia as his waypoint.
I'd decided that we needed to get to infiltrating Scholomance; the best idea I had to do so was to send a new student in. Abby had been my first plan, but the fact that she was tethered to Eliza was problematic. Lillibeth, however, was fresh and legitimately still learning, but had apparently advanced by leaps and bounds. I didn't want to send her in blind or vulnerable, so I had a few things that needed doing first.
First, I was going to arrange for her to fight the Bloodfeather Queen, with all the support we could manage. She was going in with a few days of highly accelerated training, a ghostly mentor in her head just in case things went south, a wand borrowed from Auffrey in case she blanked on her offensive spells, and a whole team planning on keeping her safe while she worked.
The fight went pretty well. I did quite a lot in terms of spamming Fan of Knives, and earned my fifth level of warden, allowing me to max out blink. 4 second cooldown and negligible mana cost is quite an upgrade.
I'd been worried about Lillibeth, but apparently I shouldn't have been. She absolutely dominated the fight, though I suspect that it was Abby taking over that allowed her to repeatedly pull the harpy queen out of the sky and slam her to the ground with a tendril of darkness. Lillibeth let loose a torrent of death coils, the death equivalent of smite, and blasts from her wand.
It took a while, but she killed her target all on her own as we saw the rest off. The whole flock of harpies fled when she died, save one with green feathers, who instead knelt. Sister Riven, I assumed.
https://imgur.com/a/6YiiyHQ
There were six corpses of harpies laying around; naturally Tara raised two and pushed them to fall for me. Eliza hardly needed to put any pressure on their minds to make them declare their love and devotion. We needed an hour or so before Tara could properly animate any more, unless I wanted mindless drones; I didn't.
All that was left now was getting Lillibeth a shiny new HuD from Bloodthirst that couldn't be taken from her, and choosing her regional reward. Bloodthirst was going to get cheesed, by the way. Hard. We pulled out, and I pulled Natalie aside. I had a shadow magic guru here for me now; it was about time I learned a bit more about such things. Maybe Sadie would respond well to having a teacher with such credentials.