I stood regarding my reflection in the glass. I looked like death; well, more so then usual. In the past, I have been better at hiding what I am, but right now my eyes were glowing so much I could barely even see the iris in them and my skin was a leathery sort of bluish grey. My teeth were covered with some kind of dark slime and I think I had missed a large splinter in my neck. My face was streaked with blood so dark it was actually black, as were large areas of my body that weren't near my previous injuries. I turned around and tried to use the mirror to check if I had closed the hole in my back. I was craning my neck and twisting around like an idiot when my sister opened the door again. Startled, I had to shoot an arm out to keep from falling over.
Leia didn't even try to hold back her laughter.
"Don't you knock?" I demanded, entirely embarrassed. This just caused my sister to laugh even harder. Suddenly a memory flashed into focus. In it a very similar scene was occurring, except I had been flexing in the mirror when my 10-year-old sister barged in. I had yelled, "Why don't you ever knock!" Abruptly I was thrust back into the present where my now 33-year-old sister was helplessly giggling at me.
I gave her a small smile and shook my head.
"Some things really don't change, do they?" I asked.
"Ahahaha… No, they don't," she took a deep breath to calm down, "I just wanted to know if there was anything in particular you wanted for lunch? Oh, and to let you know we keep this in here for trash," she said gestured at a container under the sink.
"Oh, thanks. Food. I'm happy to eat whatever you want to make," I hedged.
"I can make soup, or dumplings. There's some bread left from last night, and I think I have some cheese. Or maybe fish? I think I would have time to go fishing, if you wanted fish," she rambled, overwhelming me with options.
"Dumplings sound good, if they're not too much trouble," I said, picking a food more or less at random.
"I knew you would pick those, you always did love them."
"Did I?" I asked before I could stop myself. I hated not being able to remember things. My memories after death are all crisp and clear compared to the confusing muddle that makes up most of the memories from before. Occasionally I would get flashes like earlier, but mostly the harder I tried to remember, the less that was there.
The smile slipped off Leia's face as she was reminded that I both was and was not the brother she had lost.
"Yes, you did Will," she said, forcing a grin that didn't reach her eyes as she left and closed the door behind her.
I turned away from the Frost-eaten mirror and pushed back the curtain on the other side of the room. Behind it I found a sunken pool with slowly swirling water. I finished undressing and slipped into the water. I wondered what sort of Night Elf had indoor plumbing, then decided my sister was likely to blame for this.
I found the soap and used it to lather myself. I couldn't remember the last time I had bathed in an actual bath. Granted, I was more fastidious than many undead, but my efforts at cleanliness usually stopped at wading through a river when I was more covered in blood and filth than usual. Feeling adequately soaped, I entirely submerged myself in the water.
I let the slow current in the water carry away all the grime and blood of the last week or two. When I broke the surface a few minutes later, the edges of the pool were just starting to freeze. I scrambled out of the water and stood still, letting the water freeze on my skin before shaking off the ice crust. It seemed I was having a little trouble controlling my temperature, but so far it wouldn't be problematic unless Leia touched me for an extended period of time. I put my underwear back on, and picked up the robe.
I pulled it on and was almost engulfed by it; clearly it was Ireclaw's and it fairly reeked of his scent. It pooled around my feet and I had to roll the sleeves up so my hands could stick out. I felt ridiculous, but less so then if I tried to go out there in only my underwear. In retrospect, I should have thought to pack a spare change of clothes, but I hadn't expected the trip to be this… eventful. I washed the rags that my clothes had become in the sink, and left them to dry. Carefully, I deposested all the pieces of arrow into the trash, and whispered a brief blessing over them. I wasn't sure how much plague I carried these days, but I wasn't going to take chances where my family was concerned. The vial I put back into my bag. I drew out the gift I had brought for Leighara and considered whether or not she would actually want me to give it to her.
It was a necklace that our mother had given our father; he had been wearing it when I killed him. She deserved to have it but unless I delibratly misled her she would find out that I was the one who murdered him. I slipped the necklace into one of the pockets of the robe, opened the door and went out to join Leia. The light slanting through the windows showed that it was now sometime after noon; there was still enough time to try and gently bring up some of what I had been doing since I died. I padded through the main room, and found her in the kitchen area tucked off to the side. Her back was to me and she was busily folding dumplings. I watched her until she finished, almost enjoying the feeling of being in her prescence.
She turned around to get something and jumped when she caught sight of me. I smirked at her, amused at having repaid her for earlier.
"Don't do that!" she yelled, sounding genuinely scared. I suppose that an apparent Scourgelord was not the most reassuring thing to catch out of the corner of your eye, even one in a ridiculous bathrobe.
"I apologize, I didn't want to disturb you," I explained.
"Then you can go wait in the other room. These should be ready soon, I just have to fry them."
I returned to the bathroom, retrieved my bag and brought it with me out to the main room. In addition to the scroll, the gift and the emergency blood, I had brought with me a few books, my inscription kit and some maps. I settled down on one of her couches to read a dense tome about Light-based runes of binding while I waited. If there was one thing I had learned with the armies of the Scourge it was how to wait.
Eventually Leia joined me, bringing two heaping plates of dumplings and some tiny dishes of sauce and pickles. I stood up and helped her bring them to the little table near the couches. As Leia sat down opposite me, I picked up my plate and made a show of inhaling the aroma. I think my sense of smell had changed a lot after I died, or at least the intact memories I have from life don't have nearly the smellscape I was used to now. Unfortunately, much like my vision, smells were more weighty and noticeable if they came from something alive; to me the dumplings just smelled liked dead meat.
"They smell great," I lied. I picked one up, sauced it, and popped it into my mouth. "They taste good too," I said around a mouthful of dumpling.
Leia looked at me uncomprenendingly. I then realized that the dumplings must have been extremely hot. Well, it was too late to pretend now I suppose. I grimaced and picked up a dish of pickles and ate one; this earned me another look from my sister.
"You can't taste can you?" she hesitantly asked.
"Why do you say that?" I countered nervously. I didn't want to appear less human in my sister's eyes, though that ship had probably sailed when I was still walking around with most of my throat gone.
"You just ate a dumpling still the temperature of boiling oil, and an entire hot pepper…"
"I can't taste very well, but I can taste," I responded defensively.
"What do does the dumpling taste like to you?"
Rotting flesh.
"It tastes like a dumpling. More meaty maybe," I said, which wasn't entirely untrue.
"It's just based on what I've heard about Forsaken cuisine, I wasn't sure if the undead really had a sense of taste. I don't mean to push if you don't want to talk about it…"
"It's not that I don't want to talk about it." It was. "It's that it's not really the sort of thing that you want me to talk about while eating." An airtight excuse that would buy me another half-hour, maybe.
"I saw you were reading. As I remember, you weren't much for books… At least every time father tried to get you to study, you would try and get out of it," Leia abruptly changed the subject.
I figured this was one of the least damning things I had done while I served the Lich King, so I seized the chance to explain.
"I found that when I was idle, it felt like I was losing myself, sinking into the…" I paused to collect my thoughts, and tried again, "The Scourge, all their minds are connected, to the Lich King and to each other. If you let go, you can just submerge yourself, and let yourself just sort of dissolve into the Cold Dark. What's left is a soulless husk, a ghoul who will never be self-aware again. I was absolutely terrified of that happening to me. The first time I felt myself slipping deeper, I was willing to do anything to distract myself. Books were one of the things I could… enjoy without guilt. So I started picking up books, and reading them to fill time. I found out the cultists had a library of sorts, where they collected various tomes pertaining to necromancy, inscription, and shadow magics.
"I ended up becoming interested in inscription and rune-crafting, at first mostly as a way to improve Crimsonrime. So I took up the study of runes and helped design…. Helped design… things," I finished awkwardly. I had helped design better weapons and armor, as well as more efficient versions of the plague of undeath. I hadn't meant to contribute so much to the Scourge, let alone of my own volition, but at some point I had lost sight of what I was doing. I had tried so hard not to lose myself in the Scourge that instead I stood out, and became a focus for the shattered psyches of other undead to latch onto. I couldn't even say the Lich King had made me; I had done that to myself, and taken the first step to becoming a Scourgelord of my own free will.
"Crimsonrime?" Leia asked around a mouthful of food.
"She's my runeblade."
I answered the next question Leia was bound to ask so she could keep eating while the food was still hot.
"Runeblades, after… use, start to become aware. They aren't alive, exactly, but they consume life, and some of it collects over time. Crimsonrime is old, so she has something that approachs a personality. She's fairly vicious, and surprisingly hectoring."
"So, since I last saw you, you've become a scholar, found the Light, and even made a friend," Leia tried to joke, "Everything father wanted for you."
"All I had to do was die," I said, and irritably shoved another dumpling into my mouth. Speaking with my sister was slowly bringing back more flashes of my life. I remembered the conversation, if you can call it that, I had with my father after mother died. I remember yelling at him, about the Light. Now I realized that was when I gave up on the Holy Light, which in turn eventually led to me losing its protection from the plague.
"You know he wouldn't have wanted this for you. He would rather have had you alive and a warlock, than dead and everything he wanted. If he were still alive though, I am sure he would be proud that you managed to break free of the Scourge, and I know he would have been overjoyed you found the Light again," she stated with such absolute conviction that I was almost believed her.
I looked away, remembering my last fight with him. I decided I needed to give my sister the necklace, and pulled it out of the pocket of the robe. Glancing down, I looked at it and saw only a dull metal oval on a twisted chain. I threaded the chain over my middle finger and closed my hand around it. Brusquely I extended my clenched fist towards her, and opened it allowing the locket to dangle from my hand, swinging in front of her. A delicate tracery of frost was already working its way down the chain.
"He would have wanted you to have it," I said without preamble.
Leia stared at the necklace in disbelief and then seized it, ripping it off my finger. She opened it and stared at the portraits inside, suddenly bursting into tears. I watched her cry without saying anything, and ate the last of my dumplings.
"Where did you get this," she eventually managed to choke out through her sobbing.
I closed my eyes, remembering the last time I had seen my father. His brown eyes were full of betrayal, but the whole time he just kept pleading for me to forgive him for his failing to save me. A blinding rage had filled me, and I stopped fighting the urging of the Lich King. I shakingly drew an unneeded breath to calm myself and got a nosefull of my sister's rage and sorrow.
I was consumed with shame, but I answered her anyway.
"I got it from father. From his body. I didn't want to fight him. He wouldn't run. He… I couldn't stop myself. I killed him. I killed him, and I took his necklace and his hammer and left him there to rot. The Light saved his soul and I just left him there," I said with increasing anger. Most of it was anger directed at myself for failing to fight the Lich King, but some of it was because I was still bitter that the Light had saved my brother, sister and father from undeath, but not me. As I let my hatred grow, I could feel the rune of At'leiash start to burn.
Leia just stared at me in disbelief. I realized now that while she had intellectually known I had been part of the Scourge, she hadn't believed I had taken part in all that they had done.
"I'm sorry. I'll go," I said, rising to my feet. I picked up my bag and returned to bathroom to change back into my own things. The pants were missing the lower left leg, and the shirt left most of my chest and back uncovered, but I wasn't going to steal Ireclaw's robe. I walked back past my weeping sister to reach the front door. I watched her for a while as she let out great wracking sobs while cluching the locket to her chest. Standing still by the door, I waited for her to ask me to stay. The house was quickly filling with the scent of her absolute despair and an undertone of rage.
Shaking my head, I turned away and walked out of her home, softly shutting the door behind me.
