Faintheart woke to a darkness so thick that it was almost tangible. It was a dusty, cobwebby-type darkness. For a few moments after waking he just lay there, listening to the sounds of scrabbling and rustling.
Rats, he finally decided. S'got to be rats. Where...where am I? He had no sooner begun to wonder when he heard a faint moan to his left.
He was out of the room before he could blink and into what seemed to be a corridor. He could almost feel the walls closing in around him. Behind him, the moaning continued. Up ahead in the gloom, he could see, was the faint, flickering glow of braziers, and what looked like the beginning of steep stairs.
"What is going on?" he said to himself, striding forward. His voice sounded different than he remembered. More hollow, as if it were coming in from over a long distance. His feet seemed to clack on the hard stone floor, but he wasn't wearing boots...as he neared the light, he looked down...
And nearly fainted. There, under the tatters of a robe that was once a deep blue and was now mostly the color of dirt and mold, were two skeletal feet, the flesh shriveled away to the ankle area. He swayed with the effort of keeping himself from blacking out.
Those can't be mine! he thought frantically. I must be having a nightmare! Yes, that's it...I am just having a nightmare. Any moment now, I am going to wake up...he willed himself to awaken, but nothing happened. Then he realized that he could not hear his heartbeat. True, he had rarely actually heard his heart beating, but its absence was so conspicuous that it only served to frighten him further.
In a frenzy, he clattered up the stairs and out into blinding sunlight. "Gottabeadream," he gasped to himself.
"Hey! Where the hell do you think you're going?" he heard a perturbed voice say. He whirled around to confront what seemed to be a man, albeit a man missing part of his skull and with large glowing eyes besides. "Scourge!" Faintheart shrieked, turning and dashing down the hillside path heedless of where he was going. The undead's shouts followed him, but he did not stop. He had just gotten past some rusty iron gates when he crashed into someone slightly taller, staggered back, and landed heavily on the ground.
"Whur?" he said dazedly to the figure standing over him. Slowly, he forced his eyes to focus on the figure.
She might've been pretty once. She might've been plain. She might've been so downright ugly her mother wept from the shame of birthing her. It was hard to tell, because much of the flesh of her face and neck was gone. Her hair was the color of molded eggplant and had been pulled up into two twee little pigtails that were horrible in their incongruity with the rest of her. What was left of her lips were painted black, as were the remains of her fingernails. Or maybe that wasn't paint. She was wearing well-made robes of a deep crimson, with an expensive-looking red and black tabard hanging loosely over it. And she was smiling. Faintheart thought he had never seen anything so horrible.
"Helloooo," she purred. "Fresh meat?"
Panic set in. 'Meat,' she said, Faintheart thought hysterically. What came out of his mouth was something along the lines of "Aaagarrrrrrr! SCOURGE!" He tried to get up, but his body wouldn't cooperate.
The dead woman laughed. It was a strangled, raspy sound, as if she had something large and gravelly stuck in her throat. If she still had a throat. "That's a good one. I'm just as much Scourge as you are," she added.
Faintheart felt flummoxed and a bit dizzy. Everything seemed to be completely wrong. His senses were screaming at him. "Am I Scourge?" he asked her hesitantly.
She laughed again. "Not at all," she said with a wink. His body tried to blush, but couldn't manage it. A woman, winking at him! That hadn't happened since...since someone. He couldn't remember her name, but if he just thought a little longer...
"Where am I?" he asked, shaking away the dim traces of the memory like a bothersome mosquito. "What...happened...to me?"
"That is easy to explain." The dead woman grinned. Faintheart fought a miasma of nausea. "My name is Sickle. I think you'd better come with me."
"So, we can drink alcoholic beverages," Faintheart said to Sickle, nearly an hour later. He took a sip of his tankard of ale. He had never had ale in his life. His former life, anyway. This was his third tankard already. He suspected the tankard had not been washed recently. He also suspected that he didn't care about that. He was starting to suspect, if not outright know, a lot of things, particularly that he was floating on a particular creek he had heard about and that he was without said paddles to deal with said creek.
"Right," Sickle replied, watching him with amusement, her arms crossed over her chest.
Faintheart continued, "And we can eat certain types of fungus and mold. And any kind of meat, in any stage of decomposition. Or even if it's fresh." He belched loudly. "What do they make this ale out of, anyway?"
"Mmm, I think they make it out of barley. And grave ichor. And perhaps some deathcap mushrooms. You know, the usual," Sickle deadpanned.
"The usual. Right." Faintheart had no idea what went into ale usually. He'd never had a chance to know. But what if you had tried all these things when you were alive? his inner voice chided. Would you have chosen to become a priest anyway, and give them all up? And would you have met Helli, if you had?"
"Helli..." Faintheart murmured. Who was that? He couldn't exactly remember, and it was bothering him. He signaled the bartender that he wanted another drink. Maybe if I drink enough, he thought, my brain won't bother me right now until I can start sorting things out. Maybe the ale will help me sort things out. In my head.
"What was that?" Sickle said, leaning forward. She probably had been pretty, Faintheart decided. She had the air of a pretty woman still, the kind who knew her looks can get her into-and out of-tight corners.
"Nothing. So we can't have dairy?"
"Nope," she replied. "No dairy, no bread-unless it's molding, of course-and no fruits or vegetables."
"Why?" Faintheart asked. Sickle shrugged.
"There are a lot of theories. Personally, I think it's because we are the animated embodiment of death and decay." Faintheart stared at her. "It means we're kind of like containers for-"
"I know what it means, I'm not stupid," Faintheart snapped. "So...we are Scourge, then? Or actually, ex-Scourge," he amended, seeing impatience flicker across Sickle's face.
"Yes," Sickle replied, with mounting irritation. "We are free of the shackles of the Lich King."
"So...how did we get free?" Faintheart asked. This had all the makings of an excellent story.
"Dunno," Sickle shrugged. "Lady Sylvanas did it somehow, I guess."
"Sylvanas?" Faintheart asked. Sickle scoffed.
"Oh come on. Surely you know who Sylvanas Windrunner is..."
Faintheart racked his brain for a moment while he drank deeply into his fourth tankard. Then he leaned back in a fair imitation of Sickle's nonchalance. "Can't say that I do."
Sickle rolled her eyes. "Well, she is-was-a high elf. She was the Ranger-General-"
The word high-elf kicked Faintheart hard in the brain. His memories stirred again. "I knew some high elves once...I think," he volunteered. There was something again...something about a golden-haired female...
Sickle narrowed her eyes at him. "I knew some high elves too, big deal. But then," she said with a hint of self-importance, "I was Kirin Tor. We were lousy with high elves."
"Kirin Tor!" Faintheart exclaimed. "Wow. You must've been a very powerful mage. Very talented."
"Not was. Am," Sickle said proudly. "Just not in the Kirin Tor anymore, of course."
"So...how were you...if you were so...I mean what...er...how did you die?" Faintheart asked timidly. Sickle frowned, but not actually at him.
"Well," she began, her tone softer and less blasé, but colder somehow. "I was a researcher for the Kirin Tor, back in those days. You understand, I'm not just a mage, I am also an alchemist. I was fairly well-known for it, back then."
Faintheart nodded, a little in awe of his drinking companion.
"I was sent, at the outbreak of the Plague, to test the waters of Eastern Lordaeron. We weren't exactly sure if the plague was contained only to the infected grain or if there were other sources as well. My skills as an alchemist were needed, so I went."
Faintheart was leaning on the edge of his seat at this point.
"Luckily, the waters in the area were free of the taint of the Plague at that point. I had penned a report suggesting that we use the most northeastern corner of the area for an guarded outpost. Then, the day I packed up to leave...they got me." She stopped and just gazed at Faintheart for a moment.
Such an anticlimactic ending to the story left Faintheart a little disappointed. "Who got you?"
"The Scourge, of course."
"And that's all of the story?"
"That's all of the story that I tell the uninitiated," Sickle said, with an impressive dramatic flourish. Then she smiled. "What do you do? Or what did you do, in life?"
"Er...well, I was a priest."
"A priest, hmmm?" Her expression was unreadable. She stood up. "Then let's get you to a trainer."