When you died, you didn't run from it. You didn't get to.
You didn't expect this, no; you were foolish enough to believe that it wouldn't happen, that you would live through this, even as the cause of your death stared you down for all of a moment before gutting you on a sword, and all you can think of is Thrall begging you not to leave, a wild desperation pulling him tight at the seams, hands forcibly stilled on your shoulders and not around your wrists. This image is what fills your head as your blood drips down your cooling body.
The mission had started off well enough, yes, you and a few other volunteers apprehensively making your way through the halls of the citadel, somehow unnoticed long enough for you to reach the cursed blade that would take your life not minutes later. It is when you get slightly too close that the Lich King deems to finally take notice of you, a great pair of doors flying open on the other side of the room, and the blade leaps into his hands right as you go to touch it. He stalks back from whence he came, and stupidly, stupidly you run after him. You follow him into another room at the end of the hallway where he stands waiting for you, and you are foolish enough to think that Arthas is still in there, somehow, that you can talk some sense into him, that this whole thing has been one big misunderstanding, and you continue to think this as he turns around and you cannot recognize the face of the figure before you.
You don't even get a single word in before Frostmourne finds your stomach and thrusts upward into your ribs, your vision going black, and your senses going numb.
—-
Jaina's death is a short-lived solace.
When the Lich King pulls the shroud of sleep from her, so soon after smothering her with it, it is a tearing that mars her soul, ripped screaming from the aether and sealed back into her husk of a body. It is not a gentle thing, what her new master does to bring her back, and really she shouldn't be surprised; he was not gentle when he delivered her death- Frostmourne plunged into her then-living flesh, below the ribs and halfway down the blade as she stares into the face of the man she once loved and finds instead an omnivorous predator, a devourer of all things. It confirms again that she was stupid to run off. It confirms that Thrall was right, that she should have listened to him when he pulled her aside and tried to convince her not to go. Arthas no longer existed, the intrusive presence in her mind is not him, not entirely; a dark and ominous thing waiting for her beneath the manic rage of what was once Arthas with a frightening intelligence lurking like an iceberg. But now she is too cold to feel any sort of sorrow, an icy rage clutching at her lungs, her heart, her new master crushing everything so fiercely there is room for little else.
With the frost that now coats her tattered robes, her arms, and her fingers she is made to attack the forces that have made their base in the citadel's entrance, within hours of her resurrection. And call blizzards upon them she does, raining shards of ice as big as daggers until they retreat. When they clear out, suddenly and not without injury, both Muradin Bronzebeard and Garrosh Hellscream cover their escape, the orc shoving a protesting Saurfang out the gate and shutting it behind him while Muradin grimaces at the hole in her chest. Garrosh then faces her, axes in his hands and undaunted, eyes sun-bright and just as searing, even as the cloud of ice she's summoned looms threateningly overhead. She doesn't want to do this, no; irrationally, she would just like to keep looking at him, and maybe she will remember what the sun looks like, what its warmth feels like. Northrend has not been kind to her in this respect, and the Lich King even less so, and above all things, she is painfully aware of the trench in her chest, air passing through the great cavity of her death-wound.
Jaina does as she's told, all the same.
When a val'kyr pulls Garrosh into their plane of existence, minutes later while she and a newly-resurrected Muradin stood to the side, it's with a howl that lives up to his father's name, rattling off the walls and up to the throne, and Jaina says "I'm sorry."
—-
The Ashen Verdict does not come back for the next few days, the weight of losing the three of them, as well as countless soldiers, undermining their morale. It's just as well; while she can restrain herself and can push herself away from the sentient dark clinging to her bones like sludge long enough to give them a precious few minutes to escape, Garrosh cannot. Garrosh is two steps away from being mindless.
They're keeping him in an adjunct chamber to Lady Deathwhisper's grand hall, and they made the mistake of resurrecting him without chaining his body first. His coming back is harsher than hers, a bestial rage manifesting upon his waking and possessing him for days. His howls are a near constant for the first several hours, tearing apart with his bare hands any of the damned that come near him. Jaina watches from afar, chaining him with ice when instructed, but otherwise doing nothing to stop him from breaking free of them and continuing his rampage. It is something to behold, this great and terrible creature he has become, and sometimes she can pretend that his eyes are still sunburst yellow rather than this blood red that they are now, holding obstinately to the memory of his blistering glower from a few days ago. Right now, it is all she has; Muradin was taken away shortly after Garrosh's resurrection so that they would not tear each other to pieces. Jaina is the only one who can chain him for any significant amount of time, and he knows it. Their master knows it.
Eventually, he quiets when she throws ice-shackles upon his wrists and ankles, but she is liberal with the length of chain she gives him, and he stalks back and forth like a caged beast. He glares at her openly, and she doesn't blame him; it wasn't as if she didn't kill him. But this doesn't stop her from staring right back, seeing yellow behind her eyelids when she blinks. It helps her keep what little will she has, however small a remainder that may be. When he finally speaks, it sounds more a snarl than anything else.
"Proudmoore," he barks, his voice deeper than it was before, raspier from the metallic, rattling undertone token of all death knights. His speaking somehow makes him even more beast-like than he was in his silence, the growling restraint apparent in his voice a threat of things to come.
"Yes?" she replies, her own voice a quiet hiss, a gust of wind whipping through the chasm of her throat. Her death-wound has since been healed over, Lady Deathwhisper surprisingly gentle with her as she worked her blood magic and she watched her wound stitch itself back together, but she still feels emptied-out, still feels the space that their master has carved into her.
"Come here," he growls. He sneers at her expectantly, unnaturally still, and Jaina knows that she's being hunted. She sees it in the curl of his fingers as she steps closer, the slight twitch of them as the distance between them shortens. This does not her stop her in the slightest, even as those fingers find her neck the second she is within reach.
She is not frightened when he lifts her off the ground; it does not matter if she dies again. She merely blinks down at him, his hands trembling with rage, and when he realizes she is not afraid, he throws her to the ground. The pain does not induce fear, either; it merely makes her angry.
"Don't stare at me like I'm a fucking animal," he snarls.
"Don't act like one," she replies, frost crawling up her arms and icicles forming around her hands. "I am merely doing as I am told." He growls at her again, but she continues with "Perhaps if you did the same, you wouldn't have to be chained up like one." This is an anger she never allowed herself to have when she was alive, but the orc draws it out of her all the same, as if he were provoking a viper; this was the sort of anger that lit up Stratholme and that swallowed all it touched. But this anger is what will keep her the little will she had left. If Sylvanas could do it, then so will she, even with that dark glacier of intellect pressing up against her hollowed insides even now. It must be amused, seeing her desperately cling to the pieces of herself left, even if that meant taking shelter in the blizzard of her fury, being consumed by it until there was nothing left of her at all.
Garrosh begins to snarl at her, but cuts it off half way through, swallowing it down. His eyes are glowing, but not yellow or blue, bright red orbs staring down at her, and in death his skin looks oddly ruddy as well.
Jaina says "I'm sorry," again, not really knowing why, and Garrosh just sneers. He snaps his chains effortlessly, as if he was snapping a twig, but he doesn't attack her again.
—-
She and Garrosh stay together in their training.
Their talents are radically different- hers obviously lay in ice magic, and Garrosh discovered that his lay in blood magic shortly after she stopped attempting to chain him and whatever animate thing he touched started disintegrating within seconds of him doing so, even when he didn't rip them apart. However, neither of them knows unholy magic, and they are taught it together. They're set up in a large courtyard within the citadel, isolated from the main building and spacious enough to house them, any cultists that might be using the area as well, and the dozens of corpses placed within for their use.
Lady Deathwhisper is their instructor and Jaina thinks maybe this is supposed to be a great honor that they are unworthy of, judging by the way that the living cultists are glaring at them, and this is something that she's become acutely aware of, whether or not the things around her draw breath or not, if there's a warmth she cannot help but covet radiating from their still-living bodies, if Garrosh looks at them like they're something to eat; this is how she knows something is alive.
The magic is easy to learn, at least for her, surprisingly enough. Jaina can raise ghouls with such little effort that it leaves her with a distant terror as to why this is so easy for her. Garrosh however has a hard time controlling the visceral hunger that undeath has cursed him with, as well as the violent, impulsive temper he had in the first place, and while he can raise the ghouls with little trouble, he cannot control them at all. The moment they are summoned, they wreak havoc or run in fear from their summoner who is all-too-close to breaking them down and consuming the bits of soul left in them. Jaina's ghouls stand at perfect attention when she raises them, and she can make them do any assortment of tasks; she could make them perform a circus act if she so wished with the control she had, at least according to their teacher.
"You have a bright future ahead of you with that kind of talent," Lady Deathwhisper compliments earnestly, and Jaina doesn't really know how to react to that.
Lady Deathwhisper reminds her a little bit too much of her teachers at Dalaran- well-intentioned if not a bit preachy, but a good teacher- and Jaina is morbidly curious as to what she was like when she was alive. She realizes that Deathwhisper probably went into this not-life willingly and can't help but feel disappointed. It is a distant and foggy thing, a weight that sits in her chest that is devoid of any sort of sensation except that of a damp heaviness. It's not as if she's surprised, but seeing Deathwhisper's faceless skull and hearing a voice that could very well belong to one of her instructors from Dalaran doesn't soften the blow, particularly when Deathwhisper has to work with Garrosh with his control more and sounds legitimately sincere in her wanting Garrosh to improve for his own sake, that she believed that he was capable of great things if he put forth the effort.
"Again," she orders, and with a grunt Garrosh manages to call forth another ghoul, it wresting itself from the icy earth in the courtyard where they stand. He fixates on it, eyes a bright and hungry red, and the ghoul curls away from him, gurgling in confusion.
"Do not consume it- dominate it. Make it love and fear you," she instructs. "You are its master and it is your minion. Reach out with your mind and make it aware of this fact." Garrosh grunts again, squinting at the ghoul, but he doesn't seem to want to destroy it so much now, and the ghoul turns back to him unblinking, standing up straighter like a puppet with its strings pulled up, seemingly awaiting orders.
"Much better," she commends. "You have improved quite a bit today, Hellscream. We'll have you summoning whole squadrons of them before long." She pats him on the back encouragingly with a skeletal hand. Jaina doesn't feel sick- she's supposed to be, she thinks, she's supposed to feel some kind of revulsion, but it's not quite something she can wrap her head around. It's difficult with the pervading sense of being disconnected from her own body. She's not sure which she's supposed to be more concerned about.
—-
They see Muradin again when they're being fitted for their new armor.
Jaina is standing to the side with Muradin, waiting for their turns. He grins at her in greeting and she nods back in acknowledgement as Lady Deathwhisper takes Garrosh's measurements. She's not sure that their instructor should be doing this; she's not one of the citadel's smiths for one, and again this is an apparent honor they don't deserve, and she can tell from the sneering cultists that lurk nearby in case their Lady need anything at all. She cannot help but feel awkward and ungainly under so much lavish attention from someone in such a high position in the cult. Lady Deathwhisper is the head of the cult she thinks, but she's not completely certain because she still speaks so reverently of Kel'thuzad as if he were still around and if there's anything she's learned from her time here it's that death is not an obstacle for their master. Idly, she remembers from her studies at Dalaran a worn, leather-bound book with hand-written pages detailing older magicks, one section in particular discussing the merits of the use of soul stones versus the use of phylacteries, a much older and more complicated ritual.
She was not supposed to read this book. Advanced in her magic as she was, blood magic was not something she was supposed to be learning. But it sat on the library shelf clearly out of its rightful place, and when she went to put it away, her curiosity got the better of her. The pages were yellow and lovingly worn, some of them dog-eared and others with notes in the margins from someone else besides the author. So hours she spent curled in a corner of the library, devouring page after page of knowledge. The author merely wrote about these things as theory, but the notes in the margins- consistent in handwriting enough that she was sure it was only one person- detailed testing out these theories and their results. She doesn't even quite understand what a phylactery is until she gleans enough context clues to figure it out for herself. It was still too difficult for her to understand the finer the details of the ritual, being a mere child at the time, but she could at least get the general idea of it. It was something of a relic one made with parts of oneself- hair, blood, bones- and hid somewhere for others one trusted to find and use to bring one back should one die. It's not until she just finishes the section of comparing soul stones and phylacteries that she is caught with it. She wasn't punished for it, no; the gentleman who found her with it was just happy to have found it at all. She had feared reprimand, but the kindly gentleman merely promised not to tell if she didn't, and asked for his book back. (She learns much, much later, when she and Arthas are chasing him down, that this man was Kel'thuzad, and had felt a revulsion mingling with a childish confusion that a man who had been kind to her as a child had become this. She wonders darkly where his phylactery might be hidden, doubting that their master would let him out of his grip so easily.)
She and Muradin talk, but it's stilted on her part. Muradin has kept his former personality for the most part, and has apparently adjusted to a point where she is immensely suspicious of him for doing so that quickly. In their master's taking him away from her and Garrosh, within the few short weeks they have been here he has been groomed into a military commander. She cannot fathom why he would adjust so quickly, unless he was doing so deliberately. Muradin had a will of iron and steel, and was wily enough to have escaped the Lich King's hand for years. It was likely he meant to do so again, even if that meant playing along. She's just not entirely sure if he's playing. She sits awkwardly between spite and suspicion, getting the physiological symptoms of both but not actually feeling either of them, her thoughts ricocheting wildly from anxiety that even the will of one so unbending gave in to their master to a distant and petty envy that he can resist so easily that pretending to still be under their master's control is effortless. It's obvious, she knows it's obvious, but Muradin makes no mention of it or even acknowledges that it's happening. She's not sure if she's thankful for this or not.
—-
Their next lesson in unholy magic doesn't go quite as smoothly as the previous one.
Maybe the armor fittings really made it clear that they weren't going anywhere, maybe Muradin's seemingly overnight adjustment had shaken Garrosh as well as her, or maybe their being held within the fortress for weeks on end is finally getting to them, but for one reason or another, Garrosh cannot seem to get a handle on things. They're supposed to be reviewing ghouls before trying something much larger, perhaps a geist, but he can barely summon a ghoul in his state, let alone control it, feeding it his anger and sending it into a blind fury or the ghoul falling apart within seconds of its rising. Each attempt is worse and worse, until he's incoherent and snarling with rage. He cannot bring himself to focus enough to even use the magic required to resurrect them anymore, which only serves to feed his frustration. Lady Deathwhisper is no help during this, remaining stern and stoic. Normally, her being firm is very effective, but the prolonging of something that was only meant to be a review has made her flexible and sympathetic as stone.
"Again," she commands, and Garrosh stomps his feet and growls when the attempt to do so proves to be futile, dark magic skittering from his feet across the frozen earth and further corrupting it. "Again, Hellscream," their instructor insists. "Calm yourself." He snarls, seizing up and shaking as he forces himself to calm. A minute or so passes, crawling by slowly as Jaina watches his trembling peter down to nothing. He does not move, and Jaina tenses, rabbit-nervous and alert. It's irrational, probably, considering that she's only feeling the physical symptoms of it without the actual fear, and that she did not fear even when his thick, calloused fingers were closing around her neck, but this time is different, she knows. He had the capacity to stop, before.
"Again, Hellscream," Deathwhisper pushes not a moment later. Garrosh jerks around to stare her down, alarmingly quick and preternaturally still as he fixates on their instructor. Though his red eyes smolder heatedly, there is no recognition there, and a feral sort of growling rumbles from his chest, a thunderous sound that crashes against her.
"That is quite enough," Lady Deathwhisper scolds, bafflingly obtuse. "If you cannot rein in your bloodlust, then we cannot continue in the lesson." Jaina's anesthetized fear is briefly overridden by a hysterical fury, dead heart finding the outrage to pound against her ribcage once more with the thought you did this, you did this to him, you did this to us, repeating in her head over and over and over. With this rage, dark magic pulses in her hands, pulses out from her body in waves, and the earth erupts as a vorgul claws itself from its grave underneath their feet. The ground tearing apart and the piercing growl of it makes Garrosh's head jerks around to face it, focused wholly on it and disregarding Lady Deathwhisper, who is apparently tiring of their antics.
"I will return once you two have gotten a hold on yourselves," she reprimands, skulking off right as Garrosh charges and leaps onto the hulking vorgul. The few cultists that remained after observing Garrosh's regression leave then, knowing better than to be nearby while he's like this. For a while, how long she's not sure, it's just the two of them, Jaina reconstructing the vorgul as many times as Garrosh fells it, summoning larger and more terrifying creatures as time passes. Garrosh is absolutely relentless, and scarcely gives her any pause in between her raising her minions and him tearing them apart. Eventually, he begins to use his axes instead of his bare hands, and Jaina can slowly see the transition from beast to person, however little was remaining of it. He is no less reckless and violent through this transition, but it slowly stops being quite so mindless, less of a ravenous animal and more of a warrior. He never quite loses that wolfishness though, and Jaina honestly cannot say if this trait was present when he was alive or not with how natural it seems on him now. Their undeath has magnified the largest parts of themselves, or at the very least, left little room for pretense. Their master has stripped down their outer walls and seated himself inside, and now they must stand outside themselves, made to guard a parasite that has bored holes into them and made a nest.
When she begins to tire, her raising his targets begin to take longer and longer, and when this begins to happen, he is patient as a dog awaiting its supper; deceptively relaxed, leering at her with an expectant hunger and fidgeting when she is not quick enough with it. It's an improvement to earlier, yes, but Jaina isn't entirely sure that it would last without her being there. She starts raising smaller enemies farther away instead, geists that could easily escape from him if he didn't use his head, and uses the time it takes him to catch them to recover. It's practice for her as well as him, and she tries not to think how Deathwhisper might praise her for utilizing her time wisely, even if this doesn't seem like it will end any time soon. Garrosh's energy is practically endless. It must have been hours since they've started, and yet he's still going.
Finally, in what feels like an eternity later and her mana is depleted enough that she thinks her body might start shutting down soon, Garrosh starts to slow. He isn't out of breath, but his movements are getting steadily more sluggish, and Jaina's current geist can outmaneuver him with ease. He's too tired to get frustrated at this point, so he comes to a stop, the geist peering at him curiously from across the room. A moment later, something thin and dark streaks from his open palm towards the geist and curls around its throat, launching it back over to him with a shrill squeal. The sound is cut off with a sickening crack of bone when it reaches Garrosh and he chops off its head with his axe. Jaina doesn't summon another one, watching him carefully, but he seems to be content to be still for now.
Looking around, she thinks it might be night time now, but it's hard to tell when the land around them is eternally bathed in a murky twilight, and the only real giveaway is that it's marginally darker than it was previously. It's not too difficult to see with the blue fire sconces leaving a cold glow along the walls of the courtyard, and idly she wonders how the cultists survive so well here, given how harshly cold it is. She and Garrosh linger there for a while, the two of them recovering their strength, and when Garrosh approaches her, she no longer is filled with a primal, unthinking prey-fear. His face once again is twisted with irritation but he is merely annoyed this time, opening and closing his mouth a few times like the words refuse to come out. He can't quite keep eye contact with her, and the few times his gaze aligns with hers, he's looking at her like it's her fault this is happening. She thinks he might be trying to say 'thank you' but his pride won't allow it. Instead, she grasps his hand, the whole of the spread of her thin, icy fingers only able to wrap around two of his, the scalding heat of his body somehow getting through the thick plate and leather glove covering his hand. He growls, rolling his eyes, but he doesn't stop her. After a moment, grumbling, he wraps said hand around hers, engulfing it completely before letting go and stalking off, and she's pretty sure that's the closest to a 'thank you' she's going to get.
It makes the ensuing lecture from Lady Deathwhisper worth it.
—-
Deathbringer Saurfang learns of their presence shortly after.
He comes down to see them a few days after their 'antics' as Deathwhisper refers to it, while Jaina and Garrosh wandered the halls purposelessly between their training sessions. (Purposelessly, but together, and this is something that she never would have thought could happen, even in her wildest dreams. Neither was becoming this ice creature, this frost witch, but this is not something that she can easily change, nor can Garrosh change from being a blood golem. But their being together, their being friends- this is something they can.)
"Welcome to the service," he tells them, clapping each of them on the shoulder with a grim smirk. "I never thought I'd have you fighting by my side again, brother," he says to Garrosh with a bitter sincerity. "And I never thought I'd be fighting alongside you at all, Lady Proudmoore," he adds, laughing. It's a strange and terrible sound, anger bleeding through the glee.
"I'm surprised I wasn't aware of your presence earlier." He manages to frown for this, and the frown itself is not as frightening as the sudden transition from camaraderie to a festering disquiet, not angry so much as not allowed to be angry. "Surely the likes of you joining our ranks, Son of Hellscream and Archmage Proudmoore, is enough to be a significant accomplishment for the Scourge. At the very least it should warrant an announcement of your joining." He grasps them slightly too hard before letting go, an undercurrent of something barely contained surfacing in his every movement, from his stomping gait to his grimacing face. Their master keeps him on a tight leash, and it's clear in everything he does, glad-furious to see them and rough in the affection he is allowed to show. They're not really sure why their master is letting them roam like this, or why he's more or less ignoring them; Jaina knows that he has actively spoken to all of her comrades-in-arms at least once in their services, but never to her, not yet at least. Garrosh suspects that he means to turn them against those they formerly called their comrades. He's probably right, but Jaina suspects something worse. She bristles too much under the yoke of his control to not be suspicious, to not take note of the deliberate and careful arrangement of her training. Their master is planning something. She knows it. She just doesn't know what.
"Our master is very busy as of late," Jaina suggests carefully. "Perhaps it merely slipped his mind." Saurfang laughs again, and they manage not to flinch.
"Nothing slips his mind, Lady Proudmoore," he replies, and she thinks she might feel whatever is lying under that glacier of dark intellect laughing at her as well. "Not a god-damned thing."
They decide to stay with him, all the same.
—-
Garrosh does much better in their training after that.
He's making progress in leaps and bounds, now, and Lady Deathwhisper is proud of him, even admitting grudgingly that whatever Jaina did to calm him down worked, even if it was "disruptive to their lesson." Jaina is proud of him as well, even if she's convinced the feeling should leave something vile under her tongue. She's getting used to this. She doesn't want to get used to this. It's not that she doesn't want to be proud of him- she does, she wants to be proud of him as her friend and continue being friends with him- but she doesn't think it should be over how well he can raise unholy aberrations. She shouldn't be proud of him for how well he can kill something, how quickly and efficiently, or how many. Garrosh feels the same way, she thinks, judging by his mixed expressions when Deathwhisper praises him for a job well done. He always looks slightly confused afterwards, caught between preening and disgust, eyes bright but his mouth stretched thin and firm around his tusks. Approval is something he craves constantly, Jaina has learned in her short time with him, something he looks for from both their instructor and from her. It makes him oddly puppyish, and this is not something she would have ever used to describe him previous to this. But his distress in wanting it from Deathwhisper is clear every time it happens, and afterwards he is tense and awkward, angry at everything. He knows it's not something he should want, and he doesn't, mostly, but he can't help basking in approval where he can get it. He doesn't tell her these things directly, but with his moodiness afterwards, his stomping gait and agitation, a dog with its hackles raised.
This only increases when Saurfang joins their training sessions as well. He doesn't need to be there for the same reasons they do, and she and Garrosh are glad to see him in what ways they can, but he does want to oversee his comrades' progress, and help them along in any way he can. This really only serves to point out what she had already suspected: she and Garrosh have no business in being trained together, because they are in entirely different leagues. Her mastery of the unholy is frighteningly fast-learned, and already she nears Deathwhisper in the level of sheer power. There is no reason- no rational reason at all- for her and Garrosh to be in the same lessons any longer. It's not as if she doesn't want him to be there; she absolutely wants him to be there. She doesn't want to be alone in this place, doesn't want to be alone in her own thoughts, doesn't want to abandon him when it was she who put him there in the first place, and how cruel would that be, to end him and remake him and end him again by abandoning him. (She swallows down a sour taste with the thought of how cruel it was to bring him to this state to begin with. She could not control her body at the time, no, but she feels no less blame for it then and no less for it now, in a rare moment of complete clarity.)
But she cannot deny the extreme difference of magic power between them. She has no doubt that Garrosh could kill her easily, but his talents came in the form of a bestial savagery and an unending hunger to fuel it. He could go on killing sprees that lasted days, and but the difference between the two of them is that what he could kill in that amount of time, she could do in minutes, seconds even, with her magic. The apathy that accompanies this realization should probably be horrifying, but she's not even sure if she wants to care, let alone if she can bring herself to. She thinks her master might have just removed her capacity for these things as if he were flicking switches, turning off her emotions one by one with such an ease that Jaina doesn't even notice until she's already been numbed, if she notices at all. Distantly, she realizes that this is probably bad, but she's not really sure what she can even do about it at this point. She tries not to think about it too hard; there isn't a conceivable means to fix this, at least not permanently, and it seems like every time she thinks about how little feeling she has left, it shrivels up a little more.
Garrosh helps with this in that where she was made passive and apathetically obedient in her undeath, in their taking away her humanity, when they peeled off what made him a person, he became something they could not control easily, a maddened animal with jagged teeth and a temper whose fire put volcanoes to shame. They complement each other this way; they even each other out, Jaina calming him and giving him something to focus on, and Garrosh drudging up emotions that she had thought their master had removed altogether. It's anger, mostly- they bicker more than she and her brothers ever did, which is impressive, but with the same undercurrent of grudging affection underneath, and Jaina is sure that he would commit murder for her, and she for him and when did this become so apparent- but anger is better than helplessness, or nothing at all. Anger is a driving force, and one that she needs. She takes solace in this as she stands to the side and observes Saurfang drilling Garrosh.
Muradin has joined their training as well, aiding them in re-learning military strategy where Saurfang aids in the combat itself. It's fascinating to watch them work together, to say the least, because without the horde and alliance getting in the way, they actually get along quite well. Their dynamic is that of two dogs, an old family hound and a new, rambunctious pup; competitive but playful and ultimately learning to work together. She had found this endearing up until their instructor noticed this as well and commented on it.
"Look how our great lord brings us together," Lady Deathwhisper sighs as Muradin and Saurfang run Garrosh through combat strategies. "Dreadnaught Hellscream has made so much progress since the two of you have joined us. Just think of how much he'll improve under your guidance," she sighs dreamily, staring wistfully into space. Something clicks into place, almost audibly, and Jaina very carefully schools the revulsion from her expression even as it squeezes its black, oily fingers around her stomach. The dread that grips her is without compare, bursting through the cold numbness that has been occupying her since she died. She's not even quite sure what it's for, or why there is a weight to Deathwhisper's words whose meaning she cannot identify for certain.
"You have great things ahead of you," she promises, practically glowing with pride, turning to Jaina and placing her skeletal hands on her shoulders. Jaina has to fight very hard not to dry heave, her whole body giving an abortive twitch, and she thinks maybe she can hear someone laughing just behind her ear. There is no one behind her, she knows this for certain- they couldn't have gotten that close to her without her noticing, without Garrosh noticing first and his head swiveling around to growl at the intruder like a ravenous guard dog- but there it is, clear as day, the deep, raspy laugh of an old and bitter creature. She thinks- she knows inexplicably that it's their master, and of course, of course his first contact with her is when she is the most vulnerable she has been the entirety of her stay here. She shudders and stops, freezing in place, all when Deathwhisper's hands are still on her and she's still looking at her with glowing, eyeless sockets. Jaina swears they're twinkling, as if her eyes were still there, and Deathwhisper knows exactly what's happening.
Her master tells her two words, whispers it to her as if he was announcing her execution, and somehow, Jaina feels her insides grow colder:
She's right.