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Sometimes she dreams of it. Before the Cataclysm, before Nokota, before Vikat, before everything she knows.
She always felt the Void, the soothing cold, the whispers on the wind, the shadows in her sleep.
She used it to her advantage, to survive amongst the sand. Who would think the runt would be the one to survive the longest, to leave the desert at all.
The Void helped her, it concealed her, told her secrets and brought her to places. The tower was old, abandoned and little more than rocks soon to join the sand. The tomes were old, dusty, and made her cough when she turned a page. She had to be careful of her claws, reading in a language she didn’t understand.
The Void encouraged her to read, to understand. She cast her first spell in that tower. And her second. And her third. And her fourth, fifth, sixth. Eventually she stopped counting. She summoned her first demon, an imp by the name of Karyap. She wanted to summon more, bigger and stronger ones. The Void whispered soon and she believed it.
-
She met Vikat at the tower, she had always been taught to be wary of the sethrak but the Void told her it was safe, that the Void sent him to guide her. The Void had never lied to her, and despite her instincts screaming that she couldn’t trust him, she did.
Karyap didn’t like Vikat, distrusted the other Warlock, and that's what she was now, isn't it? But eventually the imp grew to like him, but never strayed far from his warlock.
She learned more with Vikat, spells were easier if she could see what they looked like and he taught her things not in the centuries old books of the tower.
-
She found Nokota on her way to the tower. The zandalari troll was injured, unlikely to survive the night, and despite knowing not to trust trolls and despite the Void in her head, she dragged the troll to the tower. The Void didn’t protest as she used what spells she knew to heal Nokota, she even thought it helped her.
Vikat didn’t like the troll, even after she told her story, exiled from the empire for getting too close to the truth (whatever that was). But Nokota didn’t like him either, so that was fine. Nokota didn’t understand the language of the books, nor the Void the vulpera heard, but the troll was a mage. An amazing mage, in fact. The mage taught her how to conserve mana, how to treat the burns on her hands from spells, and many other things Vikat didn’t know.
She even found herself falling for the dragon, for that’s what Nokota was, revealed to her in the secrecy of the night when Vikat had left for the day. She didn’t know when she did, but despite the Void’s insistence that she tell the troll-dragon, she kept her mouth shut, and the Void quieted.
-
She had only gotten halfway to the tower when the Void screamed at her to run back home. It had never screamed before, and she wasn’t one to ignore it so she ran. Her hyena ran as fast as it could, and they made it back in half as much time as it would normally.
And her home was burning. Not normal fire, no, felfire spread across the sand, and the cause of it had his back to her, Vikat.
The Void yelled at her, revenge, kill, murder, and she listened. She’d tell others that the Void controlled her, but it didn’t. When she leaped at the sethrak it was her who dug her claws into his flesh, she who crunched down on his arm, she who drove her dagger through Vikats chest. And it was she who tore his heart from his chest and ate it, as he watched her with his dying breaths.
And that's how Nokota found her, next to the corpse of her once-friend and felfire fading as it burned what was left of the ashes. The troll was going to leave, she had found a ship that would leave the desert, that would leave this cursed island. She looked at Vikat and to Nokota, and accepted the hand to help her up.
They went to the tower, one last time. And she told Nokota of her feelings and they shared their first kiss illuminated by the felfire burning through the tower. And as they left for the docks, Umari clutched one last book from the tower, there was more than one way to listen to the Void, after all.