Author's Note: Yeah, another thing I start and likely won't end!
Warnings: slavery, femslash, alcoholism, insanity
Chapter One
Breaking the Rules
It was oddly enticing. Like the danger just wanted to force us together. Before I had been happy to skip around and explore the Alliance controlled areas after leaving Stormwind for Ironforge in Dun Morogh. I'd gotten steadily stronger and stronger since then until I found myself casually strolling the Arathi Highlands road, unafraid of the monsters of Horde members that wandered around. But here, it was weird being so close to death. I mean, nowadays, true death was a joke, but what the undead, the forsaken, were forced to suffer in each limb drew my curiosity. Yeah, the Wetlands were bad enough with the ghosts in the water, and there had always been those screams that lasted and hung around in the air long past time for them to leave, but that seemed child's play to the Horde's undead. They just sorted lasted here even with rotting limbs, acting like any other tribe of people, building themselves up, making cities and names for themselves as heroes long past time since they should have laid unmoving in the ground. They were one of the first signs that something had gone wrong.
I tapped my leg, time passed slow second by slow second as I sat on my porch, watching them as they stared, in the wrong direction to see me, instead facing inward, as if they wouldn't attack until the their prey was right in front of them. Maybe that was all these undead could do. The dead I had come across had always been short sighted or incredibly stupid. Stuck in a past moment or their minds so decayed that they were nothing but killing monsters. These undead, they were decayed, but despite that they wore heavy armor and stood at attention, and stood, and stood. I didn't know if it was an undead thing, or a change thing. After all, didn't even some humans now have that unwavering ability to just stand in one spot for days on end without something to drink or eat? Azeroth was changing, gone into a romantic history I never saw. Instead I lived while we fell apart, crushed by leadership under broken minds that repeated commands and actions over and over again until they finally stuck.
A small breeze caught the wind and my black hair blew in the wind, a black strand licking at my face. I glanced to the side. Truthfully, I was too close to the Horde to be completely at ease. Better really to turn right toward the milling Burning Exiles that scorched the grass under them. I snapped off a flower and twisted it between my fingers, my shoulders hunched over as I stared back at the wall. I looked it over. While some of the stone had started to fall off as the old thing fell into disrepair. The Horde apparently not caring if the Alliance could sneak in. Still, at the moment, it was at the point that it was too decayed to try and scale, but to tall to climb. The Mountains to the right were too steep to climb, and I didn't feel like swimming.
That left going through the only entrance where the road still opened point to point. I could try to sneak through, but I had always heard that the undead were an unnatural lot. Would they see through my cloak? My eyes drifted toward where the Horde had set up one of their camps. First and foremost were the flags. The undead might be part of the Horde, but their first and foremost leader would always be the Banshee Queen who adorned their purple flags with her pale face. But now I saw something that made my entire body shiver. It was bad enough when the gnomes made machines that spit out unnatural green junk, but this machine actually appeared to be pumping green gas into the air. The toxic green smoke seemed to disappear but that only meant that it was harder and slower to see its effects.
I shook my head. Eyes on the prize. That meant I needed to breathe and concentrate. What could be the worst that happened if the undead guards saw me? I had to run? I ended up dead? I ended up with my body covered in their unnatural goop and ended up undead? Yeah, okay, that last one turned my stomach, but I wanted to go beyond. I wanted to see what the undead had done to the land they had rested started to make their own. Their unnatural, putrid experiments. What were they like? What did they do? Was the land poisoned forever?
My skin turned transparent and then disappeared, even to my own eyes. I and everything I wore disappeared. Getting the first part had been easy enough. As a child I loved to disappear on my matron. I had always been a natural rogue, stealing from the worst of the city, and well, finally slitting a pimps throat. For that, but I had ended up in Northshire Valley. Murder might be common, but it hardly ever stuck. Of course, getting the clothes on my back and then my weapons to disappear with me had been difficult.
Crouching low, I snuck, foot over foot, heading down the middle of the road. The more careful I was, the less likely I was to be seen and killed. It wasn't just the cloak could slip when I moved to fast, but I could leave footprints, kick up dirt, make noise and those highly trained guards would probably see me. My hands shook, I looked up, Thordan's Wall wasn't very impressive, never could have been to me since I grew up near Stormwind and the intricacy and beauty of stonework where I taken my first bronze from an abandoned stall.
And then I was through. I let a small smile peel across my lips. Perfect. Still, I wasn't out of the woods yet, and I wouldn't abandon my stealth. After all, I was in Horde territory. Better to get off the road fast before patrols spotted me. I step, careful, and even flinched as the tall grass brushed and blew around my legs. Worse, my feet left indents against the fragile stalks. I could only hope in time to become so stealthy as to not disturb a single stalk of grass as I wandered across a field. Now, no matter how careful I was, it was never enough to get rid of all of the signs of my passing.
Still, I took a quick look around me. Nothing weird yet, or well, weirder than Azeroth usually was at any rate. The grass was still green, and the flowers were a nice purple. The first creature I came across was interesting, but something I had seen in books of beasts before. It was like a huge owl. But with legs that walked in a waddle across the land, wings more like arms with claws at the end, growing horns of a steed, and a necklace of what looked like bones. An Owlbeast, if I was remembering right. I walked past it easily. This beast was mundane. Boring. The undead weren't meant to be mundane, they were supposed to be putrid and evil. So twisted by death that it followed them and seeped into the very land they took as their own. They couldn't help it. It was who they were.
As I walked, my eyes scanned a nice looking mageroyal, perfect for the plucking. I needed more ink, but I shook my head and kept on walking. It wasn't time to break stealth to restock my stores. A horse whinnied and I sighed. Really, this was not what I was looking for. The Hillsbrad Foothills were supposed to be interesting and fun. With horrid abominations and a twisted landscape that would make even the hardest soldier puke their guts out.
Still, I kept on, maybe I needed to get closer to the heart of the corruption. I kept out of the way of a crumbling castle. I would avoid death if at all possible. Atually, I decided then and there that after my death I would quickly see myself home to Stormwind. Just as I was giving up hope, I saw it. A field in the distance, what could have once been a farm, now overrun with a spill of green slime pooled in pounds on the ground. The building next to the fields was tall, and around the top hung a thin, eerie mist. I smiled and ventured forward, not fast, and with a mind to back out at the first sign of anything above my ability to deal with, but I wasn't overly worried. My first sighting of what I had been aching to see since my first kill that ended a life forever. Blessed, a prodigy, but this is what I needed.
As I got closer, I saw more and more, and my heart beat hard in my chest. The green slime went up the hills, there were more of those infernal machines that pumped that green slime gas into the air. The trees themselves were odd. Some overly green, others almost dying, and a tree turning the leaves yellow and orange before autumn. Water splashed against my ankles as I went into the river. My attention drawn from my stealth to the world around me. As I headed up the hill to my destination, I caught sight of an Undead flag. I made sure to give it a wide berth and I saw something a little different.
Worgen.
I wasn't sure what to make of these creatures. Technically they were part of the Alliance, but they just seemed so on edge, like they could lose control at any second and rip the throats out of everyone around them. Creatures of the Horde one would think, but instead aligned with us. Still, they were my people and were currently going toe to toe against spiders and what looked like could have been blood elves, except their skin wasn't golden, it was white with dark hair that glowed blue and had dead eyes.
My breath caught. I hadn't realized there were undead so hauntingly beautiful, I thought that Sylvanas held that honor. They looked determined and deadly. I decided to be smart and put a wide berth between us.
Then I was through and from the corner of my eyes I saw the beginnings of a town. I moved closer to the road, eyes scanning for any incoming patrols. The city was grey, with mist by the buildings. Searchlights traveled through the mist. I moved away, heading further along this side of the road. Every molecule of my being wanted to go there. I wanted to see the grotesque things, hidden inside its well maintained walls. Still, lightning struck in wide blue flashes inside, hitting something probably, dragging it there somewhere.
No, at least for now, I wouldn't take that risk. I'd at least explore this side of the road first. Then I smiled, well, giant spiders meant interesting caught and drained things, often bones. Maybe the undead had mutated them into creatures of true corruption and death. Though, they were a standard orange/brown hairy things. So, maybe no mutation, but perhaps they had caught an undead in their web. The things were everywhere. The undead must have abandoned this area as being too overrun to deal with. Trees were covered with webs. No effort seemed to be put into keeping this place under control.
And then I saw them. An unseemlying loud breath of air slipped out between my lips. Now these beasts were what I had been talking about. The creepers had infested the bears. The skin and fur of the creatures had been corroded to the point where at parts the flesh showed through. Worse still is where the meat had been eaten away until the bones of the beast showed, the area raging with infection and covered in grime from the outside and inside of the animal. Best was on top, where the eggs had been laid. There the spiders had laid the eggs, incubating on and inside the unfortunate bears.
I took a careful step toward the first creature, my muscles bunching as I took a careful step toward the first poor creature. The bears lips pulled back and a low, wet growl rattled its teeth. I froze, on one hand, this beast was weak, near death because of the spiders nest, on the other hand creatures in this state could be surprisingly aggressive and effective. Not that I was afraid it would kill me, more that the last fight this beast showed would surprise me enough that I would drop my stealth that cloaked me from the sight of the Horde.
So I kept going. Maybe I would find a secluded enough area that I would feel safe to take my knife and dissect one of these creatures. Plus, if I got to a place where the spiders had spun a web around their own intended victims, perhaps I would be lucky enough to find a captured Undead. I could learn a lot if I had the luxury of a Undead held captive by a web and my new, in depth knowledge in dissection.
Unfortunately, as I stepped careful step by careful step, I realized I was coming near the end of Hillsbrad Farm, and I hadn't planned on entering the Silverpine Forest. Though I had made it this far, maybe it would be worth heading further in. After all, none of these spiders had caught their food anywhere near me. They just lazily scuttled around the bears, not even touching their webs.
There was a moment, just something that bothered me. A Horde bird flying too low, something, that warned me that I should start running. But the feeling was fleeting, and I started to turn to creep down toward where the earth dipped and where I hoped to find where the spiders nested and perhaps some of their food. I wasn't too concerned about the spiders. For the most part they had ignored me, and I'd already come against similar creatures. I was sure that I could easily dispatch them if they somehow got wind of me.
Then pain ran up my spine, sharp, and hard, and instantly deadly. My spirit was already fleeing from my body before whatever had hit me had finished coursing through my body. I woke up to a blue world. That was the best way I could explain, facing a huge, blue, floating, humanoid woman whose voice whispered inside my head as I unsteadily settled into the middle of the small ring of gravestones. I took a look around, turning my back to the Spirit Healer, her voice whispering harshly in the space I stood.
It always took me a moment to adjust to the new sensation of this world. It was muted and listless, made worse by being a spirit, those I still had the weight and reactions of a physical body. I never tried to figure how that would work. As I turned around, I found myself in the familiar situation of having no idea where I was in relationship to my spirit and where my body was located. Part of the problem was the sense of unbalance I felt after having been killed.
As I slowly scanned my immediate location, I noticed a searchlight that scanned the area, just visible to the eyes. I moved forward. Sludge Farm was within my reach, and since I was already dead, well, they wouldn't even be able to see me, of course, I wouldn't be able to see them either because of that I probably wouldn't see anything truly interesting. I would have to be much closer to my body and before I even saw any shadows of the living. So I turned my back again, knowing I was near the farm with search lights and putrid smoke didn't actually help me figure out where my body was besides now having the knowledge that I was on the wrong side of the road.
So I closed my eyes, easiest way to find my body was to look the right way at the world. For most, looking at the world in this "new" way was easy. They walked through life seeing maps and health and all manner of extra things that belonged to the new way the world kept a tally of you and everything around you. I didn't see it that easily. It was a chore for me to force myself to see the world that way. Still, unless I wanted to be next to Sludge Farm in a severely weakened state, I would have to use my sigh to find my body.
Foot over foot I forced myself across the road knowing the general direction, but then I paused actually paying attention to the directions. There was something wrong. I knew where I had died, it had definitely been across the road somewhere, but the red arrow at the corner of my vision was leading me elsewhere. It pointed back toward a mountain, and that couldn't be right. At first I considered trying to go to where my body had fallen, but I had no true sense of where I needed to go now. Just a vague orientation mostly destroyed when I had become a shade. A ghost.
So best to trust the guide.
My feet hit the road and I turned, eyes scanning toward where my body probably was, and then back to the path. I took a one step, then two, toward the wall, toward the Silverpine Forest. I passed the gate and my eyes trailed to where I could still see the bluish shade of the Sylvanas's banner. I found it interesting that I couldn't even see any hint, not a mist, or glowing eyes from where the Undead stood. I thought they would linger, that something of them would be in-between this world and the next.
My feet carried me past the encampment, closer and closer to the Silverpine Forest and still the arrow was pointing me onward, no casket in sight of my map. Lights from the side of road cast a weird glow that surrounded its post, and the blue, solid shades of mushrooms grew. Soon I was beyond the second gate.
No big deal really, I was an incorporeal shade after all, nothing could actually harm me while I was a shade. I was completely beyond the grasp of anything sentient on the surface of Azeroth. As I kept my feet firmly on the path, some part of me couldn't help but be paranoid that I would lose my way completely if I stepped off the road. I couldn't help but notice that for a place so close to where the undead and worgen were born and bred, it looked perfectly ordinary. Perhaps it had a more eerie setting when I could see the creatures in contact with the dead and how the mist and air fell, but in the shades all I saw was a forest and a castle slowly appearing far away as I crested my first hill.
As I turned the corner, I saw those machines again, the air must be putrid. One nice thing about being a shade with no sense of smell or lungs to breathe the poison in. And it looked as if they had been busy cutting down the forest near their camp. The Horde was famous for this behavior. Not that humans didn't cut down trees, but we did it with a certain amount of respect and understanding of the land that needed to survive around it and supported us in return.
And still I followed the path, further and further into the forest. A phantom pain gripped my lungs as the fear of being so close to the enemy made me more and more nervous. How deep was I going? How strange was this adventure? Going beyond where I should, scouting into enemy land further than I should, it was something that the elite did. I shook my head, it was a statistical fact that young upstarts like me went exploring where we shouldn't too. We needed to be shown our place, heckled by our betters who we fought so bitterly against. It was an idiots bravery on our end, and a practice especially common among rogues. This exploration of enemy land was common, common as dirt.
But this someone was able to move a body, I hadn't heard of it before. Bodies were almost impossible to move once the spirit fled, it was weird, unless the worst had happened. I paused, this was the first time I was walking this path, wasn't it? They said you only started to fear entrapment when a an adventurer you had just met and requested help from was at your side. But we only knew about those because of the adventurers that took on the quest. There could be some that were stuck we didn't know about because their repeated path was triggered without the help of the free adventurer.
Suddenly I paused and looked to the side, the path went on, but the arrow pointed in a ninety degree angle down towards the lake. I took my first step toward the lake and then another. I felt my breath catch as I saw my first reflection of the living, a clear indication that I was getting closer to my body, life returning to me. Finally I saw it, the casket in my mind's eye map showed me where my body had been dumped.
I winced, as I called my body and life back to me. The closer to where you manifested to your body, the less it would hurt. But I have no idea what await me now. The tingling sensation was more like knives, and I almost cried out as my entire body was wracked pain. I made quick plans to run and get myself back somewhere safe. When I was far from where my body had been moved, I would use my Hearthstone to transport me back to Stormwind City. There I could clear my head, go fishing, cook up some grub, pick the pockets of the idiots near the city, and perhaps a few inside it.
Just as I got ready to run, intense heats lit up my body, and I fell.
When my shade made its weary way back to the water, my feet ghosting across the cool liquid. I crossed to the most pathetically small and close island ever, quickly climbing up where the earth wasn't so harshly angled. There, the first thing I saw was the living shade of a bear, its mouth open and panting.
And then I see her. It's hard to tell her race at first. She wears a plumed helmet and sits crossed legged, eyes unblinking, as she rests her hand on her chin. A troll, a big one with a smooth face. Even without my eyes focused to see her power, it was clear she was a power level far above me. Here was an adventurer who had probably even gone as far as the Pandarian Shores.
Suddenly her body shifted a little, her unblinking eyes turning down to look at what appears to be a thick tome in her lap. Her fingers ghosted across the page of the book. Her mouth moving as she reads.
My body had been lain beside the troll, and was still a bit wet from the water. I shivered in disgust as the troll's hand rested on my head, carding through my hair absentmindedly. A troll. A troll had stolen me away, I couldn't help but think it was the stupidest beast to ever be born. I spotted where she kept her bags, fastened about her belt. Four small, well worn totems hung from the biggest bag. She was a shaman, a stupid ignorant shaman had stolen me. Didn't she know any better? Didn't she know the danger in doing something so drastic? She could have been condemning us to something ten-times worse than death.
I couldn't help but wonder again if that was the first time we've played this game right? I checked my calendar, it is still marked the day I stupidly went past the wall. I kneeled in front of the troll, trying to figure out what she was thinking. I grasped when her eyes suddenly sprang up, and for a moment I thought those unblinking, lidless, eyes could see me. But no, they looked through me. She was a shaman, connected to the elements, a listener who asked for power, she had no control over the death, no eyes to see the one without being a shade herself.
I stood just watching her for a time, considering what could be happening what could possibly be going through the troll's mind. She had killed me twice. The first time to apparently bring me here, and the second to be sure I didn't run. What would she do if I appeared where my body was? If I started breathing but didn't try to run?
Perhaps she just wanted to talk, though I doubted it. Did she only need my body, or did she also need my soul inside it when she did whatever she wanted? I moved toward the troll, trying to see the text she was reading, and was surprised when I realized that not even I knew what was written there. I looked back at the troll who had returned her gaze to her text, her mouth moving in a way that seemed less pathetic than before. I thought I had known at least the basics of all languages on Azeroth. But this, the lines of the words, their configuration, I had no idea what was written there. Somehow I got the feeling the weird text was connected to why she had stolen me. Still a stupid troll, but now I understood she was just too interested and inquisitive for her own good, worse than me apparently.
I laughed. My teacher's had been wrong. It hadn't been my own testing of limits that got me stuck on a loop, but a Horde member with a similar problem.
Then I closed my eyes. A tingling sensation went up my spine, just a sensation as it traveled hard up my body like pins and needles. I didn't shiver, only stared, one hand going to the hilt of a dagger, as I looked at the troll. It took her a moment to glance up at me. Her finger stilling on the text as she slowly, lazily, looked up at my face, her expression as placid as ever.
"What are you thinking?" I asked, leaning in toward her. Her head tilted to the side, and I sneered at her. I had talked in common so that she might understand me. Even a troll should know common, especially one who had apparently knew a language even I couldn't read. "Are you trying to trap us?"
The troll just stared into my eyes, and then glanced down to where my hand has started to slip my dagger out of its sheath. It takes me less than a second to decide to push the blade back inside its sheath, and hold out my hands, showing her that they were empty. She looked at my hands, then back to me, her eyebrows drawn in shock. Then her lips lifted, and her chest caught for a moment before she started laughing, big belly laughing.
"Fine, whatever," I said, admitting that a rogue showing her hands free of a weapons didn't mean she wasn't still dangerous. "But your still a stupid bitch who..."
My breath caught. At the insult, while the troll continued to smile, small chuckles escaping through her lips, at her fingertips had appeared four colors. All the colors that elements could take when summoned by a shaman.
"Listen, fine, I'm not the best diplomacy, but you know your actions could damn us right? Death is quick, and life is ready for you after, but this could kill us permanently or even set us into a loop," I insisted, my eyes glancing to where she still held the elements in her hands. She smiled sweetly, except that in so doing she showed more of her tusks. I took a deep breath, not sure what to say to the Horde creature to make her see reason, or at least respond so we could start a dialogue.
Then her hands reached forward, and while she was smiling, she hit me hard with the spell. I felt not just like I was burning and freezing all at once, but I also felt like air was going to push out of me, and that roots were ripping through my skull and guts. The world went dark, and I found myself in front of the Spirit Healer again surrounded by a circle of graves.
I sighed. If I ever made it out of this, I would keep to the script of all adventurers. Better to have freedom then be looped and stuck with this stupid troll.