Every morning brought fog, thick, white, low lying. On the seventh morning after my arrival in Hillsbrad, it was tinted yellow and bore a sickly sweet smell. It also reeked of magic, a rising tempest of panic that reminded me all too plainly of Tirisfal immediately after the Plague. The chain of reason that had kept me sane snapped at that moment, and I moved from the foothills back to the farm.

"Out." I snapped at Barnabas, ignoring his greeting. "Go to Southshore. Now."

"Clair… What?"

No time. There was no time… I stared into his eyes and shamelessly exploited the powers that Arthas had given me. "Leave now." I whispered, throwing the weight of my death behind the words. "Do not return until I tell you so." He did so, hitching the sounder of the two oxen to the wagon and loading the children on. I watched until they were out of sight, before I spun on the farm. I drank the remaining oxen's blood until I was sated, killed it, and burned the buildings to the ground. And I rode…. West… into Lordaeron.

And it was empty. Just a few miles into Lordaeron, beyond the border, there was nothing. Nothing but death. There were giant red winged bats, tangled on the ground, dead. Gray plaguehounds, strewn across the wiry grass, dead. I rode on, turning north, a journey I had yearned to take but had kept myself from, deep into the heart of Silverpine, headed for Lordaeron's capital.

Just a few miles into Silverpine, my horse began to sicken, his strides shortening. When I let him stop, he dropped his head, his chest heaving like a bellows. He then collapsed, his knees buckling under him, and died. I stood there; staring in fascination, waiting for what I felt was the inevitable. And it was, less than an hour later, his hooves began to wave again, and he struggled to his feet.

"Arthas!" I howled into the empty air, and I felt the snap of his immediate attention.

"What?"

"My horse just died." I stated inanely, and I felt him look through my eyes at it. It stood, ears pinned back, eyes rimmed with reddish tinged whites. "The fog is yellow, it smells, and things are dying…" I was babbling, unconcerned when he exerted more control over me to move me to one of the bats. One of my hands reached out to grasp it, and dragged it a foot along the ground. It remained…dead. Still.

"Ride north." He ordered, and it was that, no suggestion. I remounted the gelding, closing my mind to the fact that it was no longer alive, and rode as directed, north towards Lordaeron City.

"I should warn the Order." I finally managed to complain, still heading resolutely north.

"I have already informed Baudoin." Arthas stated, his voice distracted. There were other people in the same room as he was now. Some of my brethren, his death knights, stood at the Throne before him.

I rode through the day, and still saw nothing living. The sky was empty. The trees pressing in over the road, empty, and the only thing that moved besides me and the dead horse was the fog, hanging heavy in my chest. A village along the way, empty. I stopped there, by Arthas's volition. It was abandoned, desolate, unlike the way before, free of any corpses. No bats. None of the hounds.

"This was a Forsaken outpost as recently as when you came to gather the children."

"There is nothing here now."

"I see that. Go."

I rode on, as the shadows spawned from the trees grew longer. New corpses, bears and black worgen, scattered the landscape, and I turned, again at Arthas's will, into a farm yard. The hayricks in the fields had rotted, collapsed, but there was still a hint of plow ridges, shining with parallel lines of water. A new stench hung here, rotting flesh, and there were bodies dropped randomly across the field. I rode up to one, surveying it. It had been human, before the original Plague, and had persisted the nine years since as a ghoul, Arthas's. Now it rotted, motionless.

"Arthas?" I asked the empty field.

"Clair. Forgive me for sending you this far. I had to know, now."

"Of course, my Prince." I stated, aware he heard it. I sat in my saddle for a long moment, trying to catch my breath, to shift the weight of the fog from my chest. It didn't move, even when I coughed, and I was suddenly hungry and tired.

I slept that first night crammed under the stairs of a house long dead. When I woke, I could not sense Arthas at all, and I was undeniably ill. "Not fair." I mumbled to myself as I went outside in search of the horse. I was dead. That should leave me immune to sickness. It always had before…

The horse had found his way to the barn, and stood sleeping, one hoof cocked beneath him, amongst the skeletons of the original occupants of the barn. "Time to go." I told him, and he opened his eyes. They were dull, dead, and he smelled of just the faintest whiff of decay when I grasped his reins. Time to go…but where? I couldn't head back to the Order's staging camp. The horse had been alive. Now he wasn't. Baudoin was alive, and if I carried this, no. At least the children were in Theramore…

I led the horse from the barn, and remounted, heading on the way that Arthas had sent me, towards the capital.

I sang as I cantered along, ignoring the explosions of feathers on the roadway, ignoring the small and not so small furry corpses. There was nothing, just the empty song of the wind in the trees, and the fog. I rode all day again, and slept in a barn under the horse's legs that night. It was difficult to wake up the next morning, and I spent several minutes coughing before I could stand. The horse stared at me out of glassy, bluish eyes, the indentions over them showing in stark relief. His barrel had swollen around the girth of the saddle, and I almost loosened it until it dawned on me how foolish that was. He was dead, and not dead as I was, imbued with power. He felt no pain, no discomfort. I spat out my own black blood and envied him.

Three more days to the capital, spending each night sheltered in the abandoned buildings of what had been a prosperous kingdom. By the final morning, I was so sick I had to use the horse's leg and stirrup to climb my way upright. He was spongy under my fingers, his skin sliding over his muscles, and I backed away from him in disgust. He was undeniably rotting, and I didn't think I could stand it anymore. Would I follow suit?

I grasped the skin visible on my arm and wiggled it experimentally. No. I didn't feel any different to the touch than I had before. I still breathed, although it was a struggle. "Go away." I muttered, and the horse just stared at me. "Damn fool horse. You're dead. Act like it." The stare wore on my nerves, unblinking, the eyes coated with the film of death. No more. I could take it no more. I left him just like that, still tacked with his saddle, stamped with the Order's marks, his bridle, and summoned my charger. He had also looked better, but at least he blinked, snorted, shifted, shaking his head to listen to his curb chain rattle.

I had to use a fence post to make my way to his back, and I rode on, to the capital. I was expecting the ruins, but I was not expecting Sylvanas's seat to be abandoned. It was, open to the singing breezes, and I rode on. There was no answer to be found here.

My way brought me close to Brill, but I did not pause. If I went home, I would never leave it, and there was no help for me there. I would die there as I had been born there. I would abandon Baudoin, abandon the children… No. There was one place, one possibility, and I headed for it, passing unnoticed through the Bulwark that the Forsaken had erected to keep the worst of Lordaeron's dead at bay. There were dead here, a handful of guards, and I studied them. They had been Forsaken, servants of Sylvanas, but now they rotted in the mud as everything else here did.

Now that I had a destination in mind, I did not stop that night. The moon was full and the fog glowed, but I paid it little mind, wrapped up in my own misery. I made the crossroads of Andorhal and Hearthglen at mid afternoon, and I paused. I had stood here, in this very spot, with Uther. Arthas had been alive, uncorrupted, up the road to my left that day, so soon after the birth of the Plague. Things had still been, if not right, then retrievable.

I clicked my tongue and the horse sprang into a faster canter, cutting across country to take me to Stratholme. There was still hope there.

I rode through the Triumphal Arch towards Stratholme, cautiously. I was not certain how this plague spread, and to bring it with me would certainly negate any chances I had to appeal for aid. But if Arthas was bound and determined to keep me as a servant, then I had rights to claim assistance from his forces here. I had died twice before, and still didn't find the idea any easier to swallow than it had been when I was seventeen.

But none of that truly mattered. There was no guard at the Arch, and the smell rising from the grounds before Stratholme made even my head spin, and I was accustomed to Icecrown's unique aroma. I clutched at the high pommel of my saddle, and at the charger's thick mass of black mane. No.

"Hail!" I shouted, and there was not even the call of a bird to mock me back. This was the main concentration of Scourge forces on Azeroth, sheltered in the shadow of Naxxramas, and…nothing?

I summoned my armor, immersing myself in the role of one of the Lich King's valued lieutenants, and inched forward, step by step. Any worries that I would be the one to bring this plague here, to Plaguewood, vanished. I was a latecomer to this, judging by the fleshy heaps of abominations fallen and oozing on the ground. The ziggurats stood empty, the slaughterhouse… The necromancers I had been hoping would have the answers to this were useless, fallen well before I made it to them. I nudged one of their corpses with a toe and sighed despondently. I was running out of options, running out of time, and I steadied myself by leaning against the charger. Arthas was gone from my mind, and I had few doubts of my reception if I attempted to make my way magically to his side. Plaguewood had fallen… I looked upwards. Naxxramas floated above my head, and I frowned. That was another probable bad reception, if it was not infected, there was no way Kel'Thuzad would admit me entrance. If it was, it didn't matter.

I pulled my runeblade, turning it over in my hands. It had been remarkably quiet through this. "You still persist in spite of this." It finally stated. "These have fallen. We have not."

Yet. I wrinkled my nose as I walked down the road towards Stratholme, making my way through the dead ziggurats and around the meat wagons blocking the road.

"You are ill, yes. But you have also been flirting with this; you have not eaten in days."

True enough. The last food of any sort I had eaten had been the blood of Barnabas's ox… Six days ago. I carried food, the ubiquitous ration biscuits which were issued by every single army and expedition I had ever run into, but I could not bring myself to eat them. I sighed, shaking my head. I wanted flesh, blood, but every animal I'd seen since the farm had been dead, bloating in the damp heat.

The ziggurats gave way to the lake before Stratholme, and I walked across the stone bridge towards what had been my home. The outer walls were untouched, the gates charred and hanging open. So many memories, the happiest times of my life, and the worst, were held here. It had been overrun by the Scourge, but they, like the ones in Plaguewood, had fallen. The ziggurats sprouted up between the charred ruins were empty, their necromancers now on a first name basis with the death they worked in.

I wandered the streets, taken home without conscious thought, to the Lodge. Much of the grounds remained intact, Alonsus Chapel stood. I mounted the steps of the headquarters, while part of the wooden infrastructure had been destroyed; the main building had been stone work, immune to the flames. The cellblock I had lived in had collapsed, but Uther's apartment and offices had not, and I pushed the unhinged door open.

The walls were blackened with soot, the varnish on the desk cracked, but the case on the desk was untouched. It resembled a case for a large map, buckled shut with leather straps. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't really care. It had been Uther's, and it remained intact, therefore I wanted it. The empty headedness which had haunted me since passing into Lordaeron, since becoming ill, saw nothing at all wrong with that logic.

Other than that, there was nothing there for me. It was less painful than I'd been expecting, I was distanced from my surroundings by an increasing gulf as my body failed against the assault of this new plague. Delirium chased sanity around in circles in my mind, and I left Stratholme quickly, ready to attempt one last remaining plea.

The portal for Naxxramas was inlaid into the floor of one of the ziggurats, and I moved cautiously to its edge. It should glow with lambent silver, the same as the full moon. It did not, it was a dull, tarnished gray, and there was a marked split through the stones which had contained it. It had been destroyed, powerless under my fingertips when I rested them on the apron. I stood in the middle of it, surveying the devastation. I was no caster, untrained in the arcane arts, but broken certainly looked like broken to me.

"Kel'thuzad!" I screamed, and still…nothing. I sank to my knees, out of ideas, coughing renewed from the scream.

I slept that night on the altar of the Slaughterhouse, as good a place as any in the area. Before, I had woken in the morning with some direction, either to make the capital, or to come here, to Plaguewood. I was now aimless, and I slept like it until the runeblade's concern shifted me out of it.

"Leave this place. It is dead, and it will kill us."

"We're dead anyway." I muttered through splitting lips, still curled in a fetal position on the altar. I could feel it consider that statement, mulling…conniving.

"Perhaps. But is here where you want to die?"

I opened my eyes, focusing on the sickly green wall beyond. "No." I finally admitted, struggling to sit. The effort brought more coughing, and it remained silent until the fit passed.

"Then make this final decision. Where? How?"

I stood, shivering and wobbling, but managed to maintain an upright stance. Not in the way I preferred, fighting for what I believed in… my husband, my children, the Order, or even Arthas. Dying of an illness brewed by Sylvanas had never been a dream of mine.

"Fine. Where?"

That was simple. If I could not die with Baudoin, then I would die with Uther. "He's so far away." I murmured, and the blade sighed. To get to him would require riding the way back I had come, to the shores of Darrowmere, and to his tomb.

"What else is there left but to try?" It asked, but I was already heading out.