When Ylena woke up the next morning, she found herself still in the chair across Nathanos' desk on the Banshee's Wail where she'd fallen asleep.
Despite the urgency of their mission he had stressed only yesterday, her commander had let her sleep until well into the day- the sun, already high in a cloudless sky by now, promised another scorching day in Zuldazar.
The second thing she noticed upon her awakening, and much to her surprise, was that someone had wrapped a blanket around her while she was sleeping- and unless Garona had more of a nanny than she would have thought, that someone could only have been the the ship cabin's occupant himself.
A touching gesture, although pretty much useless considering it was almost as warm inside the vessel's belly as outside, and oddly- well- human.
Perhaps there was still some humanity left in Nathanos, she wondered, well hidden beneath all the snark and the icy cold mask of the Forsaken Dark Ranger he liked to present to the world, for whom nothing mattered but the will of his queen and who literally walked over a mountain of dead bodies to carry it out.
Ylena let out a small snort and shook her head about herself.
Well. So she'd spent the night in his cabin and managed to sleep through it.
And she'd better not read too much into something that had probably been nothing more than an instinctual act, a faint memory of a time when he was still alive and cared for the wellbeing of other people-
And still, before she threw the blanket off and got up, she couldn't help but briefly hold it to her face and inhale the scent of it. It was slightly musty as she would have expected, but there was the whiff of another aroma as well which was distinctively manly and not at all unpleasant.
Despite his high rank, Nathanos' domicile on board the Banshee's Wail was reduced to the basics and lacked any individual touch. He had been a man of simple taste in life, and apparently, undeath had not changed that.
He seemed to have left the ship now, doubtlessly to report to Sylvanas about the new discoveries and discuss their further approach. Ylena thought it best to leave as well. She badly needed a bath and to change her clothes, and who knew how much time she would have left for that until her commander would send for her again.
After a quick goodbye to Garona at the mission table, and picking up her ( again sleeping ) pet next to it, she left the ship and made her way back to the Zocalo.
She didn't have to wait long for Nathanos' call.
Only a few hours later, she was informed that a suitable candidate among the tidesages had been found, who would with some luck ( or with some threat of violence ) be willing to help them find Marshall Valentine's body.
To her great disappointment however, her commander wouldn't be part of the mission this time, but had instead ordered Lilian Voss to accompany her to the Stormsong Valley.
Like Garona, the undead had been a former member of a secret organization of rogues named the Uncrowned, and now served the Horde as an advisor and mentor for newly raised Forsaken.
Remembering the initial horror of her own resurrection, Lilian claimed that she wished to help her protegés adapt to their new situation, but secretly Ylena thought that she was rather unsuited for the job.
It had taken Lilian a long time to accept the painful truth about her condition, and although many years had since passed, she had never really gotten used to it.
Her "I am Forsaken"- greeting always sounded particularly self-pitying ( and Quinni was quite good at imitating her creepy, whining voice ), and Ylena found her endless wailing about everything she had lost rather tiring and depressing.
Granted, it was a bit mean; Lilian's fate was tragic, to be sure- her own father, a High Priest of the Scarlet Crusade, had imprisoned her and ordered her execution when he learned about her transformation, whereupon Lilian had killed him and wiped out the entire monastry where she had grown up- but Ylena just couldn't imagine in how far her presence should be encouraging, let alone a shining example for new recruits in the ranks of the Forsaken army.
Thus, she was less than enthused about Lilian's company on her new mission, but things got even worse when upon entering her boat, she saw who her second escort to Stormsong Valley was.
"You?" she snorted with an incredulous laugh, too perplexed to bother with courtesies.
The Nightborne turned to her with a scowl on his handsome, purple features. "My brother told me there would be need for a skilled warrior on one of the warchief's missions and encouraged me to- volunteer," he told her through clenched teeth, visibly no happier about the reunion than she was. "Well,"he shrugged his broad shoulders."Can hardly be more annoying than grappling with dark iron dwarves in Xibala, can it?"
He produced a canteen from his pocket and took a hearty draught. Ylena raised an eyebrow. "A bit early for a drink, don't you think?" she asked as she climbed into the boat and sat across him. "It's hardly afternoon."
Thaedruill gave her a"considering my company I have every reason to drink" sideways- glance and she shook her head with another snort. "Right," she said and reached out her hand. "Give me the bottle."
"Ahh, young people," Lilian commented in her unique, wailing voice. "I used to be young and beautiful once."
The Nightborne warrior eyed her, visibly uncomfortable. Unlike Ylena he wasn't used to the sight of the Forsaken and found them rather scary, and who could blame him?
If it was true that everyone was equal in death, this didn't apply to undeath as well. The Forsaken had nobility and infantry just like the living, and while Sylvanas and her dark rangers looked more or less like their old living selves thanks to the Valkyr's efforts, poor Lilian, like most of the other undead, was hardly more than a decaying corpse, an abomination, a monster. No wonder she was depressed.
But Ylena had no intentions to spend the passage with another of her tirades about the loss of her good looks. She handed the canteen back to Thaedruill, determinedly grabbed the oars and started rowing.
"Better get a move on," she said. "It'll be a long way." She threw him a sharp look. " Which means, we'll take turns."
After a while ( and a few more draughts from Thaedruill's wine bottle ) Ylena noticed that she actually enjoyed the voyage.
The sea was smooth and the rowing easy, and the steady movement even helped relax her shoulders which were still tense from a night spent in Nathanos' chair.
"So you and your brother are stationed in Xibala?" Ylena asked Thaedruill, when neither he nor Lilian made any attempts at a conversation, but instead stared silently at the waves, both lost in their respective gloomy thoughts.
The Nightborne raised his eyes to her, as silvery bright as the hair he wore in a long, artfully braided plait that reached well unto his lower back.
"With the other Shaldo'rei, yes." he growled in a tone that left no doubt what he thought about his commission. "Looks like the Horde has a policy of leaving the shitty jobs to its new members."
Ylena raised a brow. "Now that is a bit of an exaggaration, I'd say," she replied. "At least you're in the fresh air there, and right next to the sea on top of it. Sounds nice enough to me." She winked at him. "Almost like on holiday."
The Nightborne snorted contemptously. "The air in this blasted land can hardly be called fresh," he griped. "The mountains are full of hostile, gory beasts and the beach covered in mole machines that spit out dark iron dwarves in cycles. You call that a holiday? "
"Well, we're all here to fight, unless we can serve the Horde in other ways." Ylena shrugged. "But I take it you haven't learned a profession?"
"Of course not. I'm of noble birth." His gaze roamed wistfully across the sea, towards the Broken Shore in the west. "I wish the war was over yet. I want to go home."
"Don't we all?" Ylena sighed.
Generally, she had little love for whiners- let alone noble whiners- but she couldn't help but feel sorry for the young warrior. If Zandalar had been a culture shock to her, it must have been all the more to him- out of his purple bubble, and right into a wild jungle.
In private however, she had her doubts that the end of the war meant they could all go back to normal.
This conflict wasn't like the ones before, the usual tit for tat between Horde and Alliance. Too much had happened, too many atrocities had been committed and the fronts were too hardened; a truce was hard to imagine, let alone peace-
She shook her head in order to rid herself of such unsettling thoughts.
"A beautiful city, Suramar," she said. "Or so I've heard."
"Oh yes. The greatest and most beautiful of all places." Thaedruill confirmed, swollen with pride. "You have no idea. Silvermoon is nothing compared to it."
Ylena shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not from Silvermoon. Been there only a couple of times."
Thranduill watched her with a thoughtfull nod, the wiry lower arms beneath her rolled-up sleeves, the calloused hands with torn and not too clean nails.
"You're from peasant origins I can tell," he noted. "But in war, people can rise up in ranks no matter their descent-"
Ylena forced a smile. This Nightborne prig really tried her patience.
Besides, he wasn't wrong. Without the faction war she would probably still be hunting wandering ghouls at the borders to the Ghostlands and dream of becoming a Farstrider; a dream with little prospects of success in light of the fact that there were numerous contenders with more experience and more illustrous family names.
"Indeed." she replied sweetly. "And as your superior, I have decided right now that it's about time you take the helm. Literally, of course."
Thaedruill emptied his bottle until he, reluctantly, did as she told him. And since Lilian was higher in ranks as the both of them, and besides not fit for manual labour for obvious reasons, he had to row all the rest of the way until Warfang Hold, the Horde's foothold in northern Stormsong Valley.
The tidesage they were looking for went by the name of Thomas Zelling.
As their spies had reported, he was dying of an illness, but he had a wife and two children and would probably do anything to ensure the wellbeing of his family after his death.
The way from the outpost to his homestead led them through an idyllic hillscape. Softly murmuring brooks with crystal- clear water flowed under flowering trees, and wild horses ran across the lush green grass of the meadows.
It was the most beautiful and peaceful place Ylena had seen in both Zandalar and Kul Tiras so far, but the impression was deceiving: Lord Stormsong, the leader of the tidesages was rumoured to dally with dark powers, which was the reason why Zelling had left the order and his family was now penniless.
A small cornfield, a vegetable garden and a few cattle gates indicated that he had tried himself as a farmer after his withdrawal, but the farmstead was visibly in poor shape and its inhabitants, a stricken looking woman and two small kids, were anything but happy about the unexpected visitors.
Her husband wasn't here, Julia Zelling told Ylena and Thaedruill with tears in her eyes( Lilian had precautionarily decided to stay in the background ) after they had assured her of their good intentions, he felt that his last hour drew near and had left the house so his children wouldn't have to see him die.
Ylena felt a lump come to her throat at the thought of using this family's desperate situation to their benefit, but she determinedly swallowed it.
The dying tidesage was beyond help, but he could still help them win this war and in exchange, the Horde would see to it that his family would be taken care of when he no longer could. Win-win.
And so it happened.
As anticipated, Thomas Zelling agreed to help them find Marshal Valentine's corpse, however, it turned out that he had not made his peace with his fate. He just could not accept that he should die of an illness and leave his family alone when they needed him, and when he saw Lilian he took it as a sign that there was a way out of this: to become a Forsaken.
At first, Lilian refused.
She warned him that he would be changed, that his family would never accept him after his transformation as she had so painfully experienced herself.
But when it became clear that the man was already too weak to use his magic powers, and firmly decided to go through with this no matter the consequences, she made up her mind. A tidesage in the ranks of the Forsaken could still be useful and: "Who knows? Maybe it will be different this time." she said, albeit in a tone that made clear she had little hope of that.
When Zelling had drawn his last, rattling breath, she called for the Valkyr to resurrect him in the name of the Dark Lady.
Ylena had never witnessed the ritual before and found it quite unsettling, and a look at Thaedruill's wide-eyed stare, his usually lilac face now almost as white as his hair, showed her that the young Nightborne was absolutely horrified.
And sadly, Lilian's predictions proved only too true.
Julia Zelling and her children wouldn't recognize their husband and father in his new form and fled in fear of the "monster".
"I knew it would end like this," Lilian said gloomily when the three of them watched the tragic scene from a safe distance, crouching behind a bush. "It always does. I have seen it too often."
She threw Ylena and Thaedruill a somewhat reproachful look. "We have no place among the living, they will never accept us."
With a pained sigh, she rose to her half-skeletonized legs and walked over to Thomas Zelling, who stood frozen in shock at the terrible realization of what he'd become.
"I warned you that this would happen," she told her new protegé and laid a comforting hand on his sloping shoulders. "What's lost, is lost and cannot be given back. Now come. Embrace your fate and carve your own path. Your family will be taken care of as I've promised."
When they returned to the Banshee's Wail, Nathanos was pleased to hear about the success of their mission, but Ylena couldn't deny that it had left a bitter taste in her mouth.
She watched the familiar severe, expressionless face of her commander and her heart broke for him when it occured to her that it must have been like this for him, too.
He had been met with the same disgust and rejection from the people he had long and well served, as she had seen it today on the faces of Zelling's family.
There was a reason why the Forsaken wouldn't put their trust in the living, as their traditional farewell went. How could she ever hope to prove them wrong- and prove herself worthy of his?