Chapter 13

A long quiet interlude stretched out before the two drinking companions, each sedated by the gravity of the tale that had just been uttered, by a strange mixture of new-found closeness and fresh awkwardness.

" S'tell me lad, " Daghmor slurred, getting tired and nearly drunk enough to pass out besides. " You're a wizard, one of the most powerful ones I've ever encountered, seeing as I've not personally met your golden-haired fiancée yet, " the dwarf snickering at his own joke. " S'tell me, why does a wizard who would give up almost anything in this world before he would surrender the ability to work his craft, why does he get drunk and tear up all his books, crush his scrolls, only to lovingly restore and repair them in the morning? Yer methodical even when you drink, you only attack your library, not your furniture, your clothes, nothing else but the books. I've noticed lad, " the dwarf nodded, pointing at Crys, " even if you didn't want me too. I've been to plenty of drunks places and it's the thing that turns them to drink that earns their wrath. "

So there it was. The question that Sarah must have asked herself many a time before, but was too timid and tactful to verbalize it. Realistically, only she and Daghmor would be the ones to know about his destructive rampages, rarely if ever entertaining guests of any sort in his chambers.

" A pain for a pain then is it, Dagh? " Crys sighed. " Fair enough, and a simple enough answer too, I think. Magic is the source of all my woes, but if I surrendered its use, I'd wouldn't have the strength to carry on living. Each and every day I have a dagger of cold emptiness stabbing me in the gut, reminding me that the Sunwell is gone forever, robbing me and every other Quel'dorei of the simple and glorious feeling of wholeness we once experienced. It's like having a second stomach that will only recognize one kind of food, and none of us can ever dine on that particular food again, leaving us feeling forever empty. I can stave it off for a bit, sure, a little shot of my own magical energy to dull it, but it always returns, always. I truly pity those elves whom have no training in the arcane arts. They would have no way of holding off the addiction except by being near a moonwell, and our cousins don't take too kindly to us being near those. "

" I drink because of what I lost back on Lordaeron. My family, my home, the Sunwell, a future amongst my people. But when I strip away all the layers with booze, I get to the core of the matter. It is the study of magic that did all that. Directly, indirectly, intentionally, accidentally, the mere existence of people like me has made it all possible. The working of magic draws the Burning Legion to us, as they hunger for it too. Do we stop working arcane magic? No, we can use it to defend ourselves against them, we tell ourselves. We can gird ourselves against the seductive impulses, we are wizards after all. We can command the elements to do our bidding, overcome the otherwise impossible, do things that can only be imagined by any other beings. We won't give that up, even if it brings the Legion back to Azeroth a hundred times. "

" Kel'thuzad, the one responsible to sowing the Plague in Lordaeron's northern reaches, the one who founded the Cult of the Damned, the one whose resurrection destroyed the blessed Sunwell, he was one of us. He was from Dalaran, he studied there, he nurtured his art there. But there are no personality requirements to be a mage. No tests of suitability. If he is crafty and subtle along the way, the most megalomaniacal despot can excel in the arts, his sense of self-worth and why he should treat 'lesser' beings with contempt growing stronger, along with his desire to rule over them. Kel'thuzad wanted power, just like every wizard does, but he was willing to do anything to get it. The Light only knows what he and Arthas are doing over there now, being on another continent only delays its affect on us. "

" So, in short, every arcane spellcaster on the planet is only slightly less guilty of the endless pageantry of death and war than those who actually set the events in motion. From our ranks have risen the most foul and diabolical beings the world has ever seen, but we still won't give up our magic. We continue to provide a breeding ground for the next savage tyrant, the next would-be world ruler, even researching more and more powerful spells for the next one to learn and unleash on the weak and defenseless. In my sober moments I work my craft, using it to realize my desires and get me through another day. At night in my drunken moments, I lash out against the thing that is a part of me, that is responsible for both my misery and the suffering of untold thousands world-wide. That war you fought in, Dagh, the one that took you away from Matilda? A wizard, an impossibly powerful one, but a wizard nonetheless, brought the Horde to Azeroth. He died for his role in it all, but that one death cannot undo the scores dead as a result of his actions. Sometime in the future, it'll happen again. One year, ten years, a hundred years, it will all happen again. It might be someone I know. It might be me. People with more sterling character than I have succumbed, so sit and share a drink with the elf who might snap one day and enslave or kill thousands with his actions. We are but weak mortals wielding the power of gods, and would rather die than give it up, after all. "

Crys spread his lips in a grim smile and raised his glass in a jaunty salute, downing the port and suddenly rising and whipping the glass into the fire, causing it to shatter and ripping open the elf's shoulder wound at the same time. Grimacing in pain Crys fell back down into his chair, grasping his shoulder and breathing deeply through his nostrils, fuming at the stupidity of it all. Daghmor looked introspective after the elf's tirade, peering at what wine had left in the stein like a seer scrying in a bowl.

" Now, lad, answer me this, if you can, " the dwarf said finally, not looking up from his stein. " Say there was a swordsmith living in a small village. Say all he was really good at was crafting swords. It was his livelihood, his trade, it put bread on his family's table and clothes on their backs. Swords cannot be used for cutting wood, cannot be used to hunt animals, they serve only one purpose; conflict, brutal, deadly conflict. Knowing full well what his blades can and will be used for, the swordsmith is at a loss as what to do. He can very well stop making swords, but then both he and his family suffer from the loss of income, and all for the sake of his conscience. If he continues making swords, they prosper, even though his blades could be used for evil purposes by evil men. So say that the swordsmith decides to keep making swords, willing to put up with imagined wrong-doings than watching his family suffer…"

" There was a question here…? ' Crys asked, getting impatient.

" Aye lad, " Daghmor replied nodding and looking at the elf across from him. " Say every sword that the swordsmith had ever made were wielded by a band of robbers, who descended on the swordsmith's village, killing everyone; the swordsmith, his family, everyone. Who is to blame for that tragedy? "

Crys, still gritting his teeth against the pulsing pain in his re-opened wound, thought about the story, turning it around in his mind. A few times he opened his mouth to speak a reply, but the story was only simple in its form. Who was to blame? The swordsmith for making the blades? The robbers? The swordsmith's master for teaching him how to make them in the first place? Finally, the wizard said; " The robbers, I suppose. They chose to kill people, and whether they had swords from that particular swordsmith or not wouldn't have changed the fact they would have killed everyone. "

Daghmor nodded.

" A sword is just a thing, lad. It's how it is used that determines good or evil. Magic is a tool of you wizards too, and it's the desires and personality of the spellcaster that makes them a hero or an oppressor. Even if magic is fancier and can kill more people, a sword to an unarmed and unarmored man can be as deadly and powerful as a lightning bolt from the sky. So don't blame yerself for making monsters. They were monsters already, and magic just happens to be their tool of choice. Kel-whatever would have had to train himself to be a warrior instead of a wizard to get his power, and would have put people to the sword rather than spreading a plague around. "

Crys found himself agreeing with the rogue initially, but as he thought more about it, the example was a bit of an over-simplification, and he said as much.

" Magic wields the user as much as the user wields it, though. No matter how close a bond a warrior can develop with a favorite blade, you simply cannot have blades running through your body, nor have that sword be a part of you. Magic changes the way a person thinks, often making him callous and lazy, seeing how he's figured out what only a precious few have been able to, and how many things magic can do to make his life easier. I could instantly teleport to Jaina's council chambers right now if I wanted to and wasn't so drunk. Why walk? Why ride a horse? I have spells to open doors, sweep dust, mend clothing, light candles…everything but chew food for me it seems some days. I could choose not to move from this chair and have almost everything needed to continue existing. Magic in the beginning is much like swordsmanship…both require hours of dedication and practice. The difference, however, comes later on, when both the mage and the swordsman become more experienced. The warrior has to keep exercising, keep training to keep himself at his current skill level, and even then advancing age will make him have to work ever harder to maintain his skill. "

" Magic is different. Once a mage becomes accomplished, while there is an intense drive to gain more and more power, a spellcaster could remain at his current power and never fall back, provided his mind does not fail him. He has reached a plateau, and with that power at his command, he becomes decadent and slothful. Petty concerns are beneath him now, when, with a flick of his wrist, he could summon a banquet for his table, or hot water for a bath, or some foul demon to kill an intruder. All the honest, physical limitations have been taken away, and the caster slips further towards that need for instant gratification expressed by children. Knowing your way around a sword can make a man confident, even cocky, but magic creates megalomaniacs, would-be gods. A sword can be made to kill people, kill people well, even, but when you design a spell that sucks all the moisture out of every living thing within a twenty pace area, you damn well know what the effects are going to be, and what sort of person will get a lot of use out of such a spell. "

" What if, " Crys continued, holding a finger up to mark the point, " what if not only would there be fewer swords in the world if the swordsmith had given up his trade, but if he gave it up, so would everybody else, and there would be no more swords in the world at all. What if the sword was the reason for all the war and chaos that kept cropping up? Would it not make moral sense for all swordsmiths to give up their trade, if I meant that there would be no more war? "

Daghmor shrugged at this. " Just like magic, even if there were indisputable facts to show that the manufacture of swords was linked to wars, there would be many dwarves who will still not believe it, or at best, publicly retire, but secretly make swords just because it is forbidden to do so. It would be those hidden swordsmiths who would then wield a disproportionate amount of power, should their works ever reach the light of day again, which they most certainly would, and the whole thing would start over again. As I said before, the ranks of wizards haven't been the sole supplier of miscreants to the world, just the supplier of the flashier and more memorable ones. Magic, like the knowledge of sword making and the metals they are made of, is a part of this world, a part we will never be able to banish, no matter how many suffer and die. If buying the last cut of beef from a butcher means that a man, angry at this, goes home and beats his wife and give no supper to his children, it's not your fault, even though you were indirectly responsible. Not even the titans, for all their power and knowledge, could predict every little thing that was going to happen because of what they had done in forming Azeroth. They just did as they must do, and moved on. You can't blame yourself for anything but what you directly have done, and can only foresee the results of your action within your lifetime. Anything else is pointless paranoia and anxiety. "

" As wizards, though, " Crys countered, " we have a long history of the power-hungry and mad. We have a doubly rigid obligation to seek out corruption amongst our peers and keep ourselves from becoming seduced by the magic. Opening or working on a particular spell or school of magic, such as necromancy, will almost ensure the revolutionary and horrid genesis of some new spell or curse sooner rather than later. If we research and study with no concern for future generations, it may evolve too rapidly, out-stripping effective counter-measures. We must look beyond our own lives, to the lives of our apprentice's apprentices. This is why studies in necromancy were forbidden at places like Dalaran, yet were solely researched in some dark laboratory by a group of rebel wizards. One side studies like mad because they know the other side is trying to counter them, and vice versa. The study of magic is self-perpetuating, snowballing until we will have the kind of sorcery that can devastate half the planet with a single spell. I will have been a part of it, the wizards of the future taking what they want from the theories of the past without regard for its original intentions, and making new ways to enslave, kill, or inflict pain. "

The dwarf sighed, wondering if the elf was being pig-headed just because he was trying to prove his point, or simply didn't want to admit he was wrong. " Don't blame the raindrop for the flood, lad, blame the storm. Hundreds of years ago, if all the most powerful mage could do is light a fire under someone's arse, then he was feared, and all would shake their fingers at what would come next. Then it was several people's arses, then a home's, then a village's, then a town's, and so on. All we can hope is to leave the world in the care of our children and students, and trust that we taught them well enough not to go and do something fool enough as blow it up. Now, that's quite enough of all this chatter. Ethical debates have their time and place, and two ex-soldiers nearly passed out from drink in the middle of the evening is not either of those. "

Crys nodded to concede the point, though not entirely convinced about him being blameless in all of the world's current woes. It was sort of an ethical run-around that did nothing but satisfy the need to debate it, the march of magic continuing on in the meantime. Daghmor yawned deeply, a gaping hole of a mouth surrounded by curly facial hair, forcing Crys to barely stifle one of his own. He would check his wound again and then retire to his bed, the chair the dwarf was already dozing in comfortable enough for him to remain there for the whole night. Crys idly wondered, as he walked stiffly towards the green stained door of his bedchamber, if Dagh was able to visit Matilda in his dreams, playing out all the avenues of a potential life with her if only for a few hours a night and with only the barest of remembrances of them in the morning. His memories were all he had left of her, and were doubtlessly one of his most treasured possessions. The warmage knew they were all he had left of his sister, but had been unable to even dream about finding her again, much less trying to fashion some sort of normal life with her out of the ruins of their homeland. Some things, it seemed, were beyond even the power of dreams.

" If you see your friend turn sick and grey,

While you're both out playing in the hay.

Won't hide, don't stay,

Hold your mouth and run away… "

Leetha hummed the children's rhyme about the plague she remembered hearing over in Lordaeron as she drifted towards her target, her incorporeal body slipping through stone, wood and metal with equal ease as she traveled. There was no barrier short of magic or powerful holy sigils that could prevent her passage, and Greymere Tower was one such place. She would not be able to dispatch the dwarf and the elf that Suul wanted dead in her current form, so she would have to make a stop first. The banshee paused, drifting up to street level to check her direction, only the top half of her head visible to any who might have been awake as such an early hour and spotted her. She was on course and mere blocks away, traveling in a direct line from her point of origin making her progress unmatched by any fleshy, living creature. Leetha drifted through root cellars and basements, sensing the sleeping humans above her stir and twist around in their beds, disturbed by her unearthly presence. She wanted to slip up through the floor boards and make a husband forget where he had met his wife, or a child forget the soothing murmurs her mother used to sing to her when she was ill. Nothing big, just a tiny bit of happiness lost to the void forever, but she could not. She would have to content herself with her target and the two she was going to kill. Quality, not quantity. The depth of suffering was the key, not the amount.

The undead elf slipped noiselessly through the wooden planks of the floor, peering around the darkened interior of the house the maid named Sarah lived in, according to Dracol's minions. She made too little money to afford an individual apartment so she lived with three other women who also worked menial jobs in Theramore. Leetha would have to be careful and quiet, or else the screams might draw too much attention to her presence, something, if the rest of her mission were to succeed she would have to make sure didn't happen. The women in the small building sandwiched between two shops stirred as the banshee raised herself up fully above the floor, the trailing bits of her tattered dress brushing the top of the rough wooden planks. The maid she sought had coppery hair and freckles, the undead elf peering at the four sleeping forms to better get a look at their features. There she was, her back to the spectral woman and completely oblivious to the peril she was in. Excellent.

Leetha moved her long fingers over the head of the sleeping maid, rolling her eyes back into her head as she drifted there motionless except for the involuntary rippling of her ethereal garments. Leetha chuckled verbally as she scoured the maid's mind, her memories, her fears. There was much to work with here; her father a drunk, her mother a silent, down-trodden house wife, a brother who volunteered for the army far too young and came back dead. There were happy moments as well, as Leetha had found in even the most miserable of lives led, but these were trifling things, and could easily be destroyed. Leetha noted too, this maid had no small crush on the elven wizard who lived alone in his chambers at the top of an unpleasant tower, torn apart by grief over what he had lost in the old world and drinking himself into an early grave, just like her father had. How sweet that she wanted to show him kindness and patience, so that she might turn him away from that same inglorious fate. That is why she went to his tower, how she knew how to bypass the door's defenses and gain access to the elf's chambers while he still slept, surrounded by empty bottles and torn spell books.

The maid stirred from the psychic intrusion, her face screwed up in a grimace and a sheen of sweat covering it. That was enough of the scouting mission, time for the main assault. Leetha's spectral hands drifted down until they almost locked Sarah's face in a cage of fingers and black nails, the banshee lowering her face so that it was parallel to the maids. After a few more brief moments of feverish grunts and fingers wringing the bed sheets Sarah awoke, looking into the unearthly, cold blue eyes of a banshee who grinned wickedly at her. Before the impetus of a scream could even be mustered by her mind Leetha's fingers slipped inside her skull, touching on various points within, freezing her mouth in a silent wail, the human's eyes wide with fear and confusion. Leetha began her work, shifting her fingers like a potter working wet clay, moving this around, destroying that. Gone were the maid's memories of sunny summer afternoons with her friends underneath the covered bridge spanning then Silverstream River in Elwynn forest. Gone were the oat cakes her mother baked on her good days, when her father was actually working and they felt like a family again. The human choked, a dry, gagging noise and tears began to stream from the corners of her eyes, but there was no force she could muster that could break the banshee's terrible hold on her mind.

Rather than simply fearing her father and listening to him hit her mother, Leetha made it so that he had struck her as well during his drunken rages. The elf in the tower was just using her, and would die as broken and alone as her father had before the plague struck. Her brother had joined the army after she suggested it to him, and returned to the home a bloody ruin mere weeks later. The incorporeal elf had to stifle a peal of dark laughter as she worked, settling instead on a perverse chuckle as she continued to mold the maid's mind so it would become a suitable place for the banshee to reside in for the next few hours. Some of the other in the room began to stir. It was time. Opening her mouth impossibly wide the banshee's mouth and eyes began to emit beams of ghostly energy which flowed into the maid's own twisted mask of a face. A few horrible moments passed and Leetha literally began to pour into the maid via those three points, every last bit of her disappearing into her new living host.

One of the other woman in the room suddenly sat bolt upright in her cot, clutching the night robe she wore to her bosom in a gesture of abject terror. Her eyes scanned the room, trying to locate the source of her terror, but the only thing that seemed out of place in the quiet room was Sarah trashing around in bed, whimpering and clutching at nothing. Tossing the sheets aside the woman raced over to Sarah's beside, grabbing a hold of one of the maid's flailing arms and holding it tightly.

" Sarah! Sarah, wake up! "

The woman's pleas roused the others, who looked from their beds at the scene before them. Sarah continued to flail and then with a final, jerking convulsion, laid very still, as if dead. The remaining three looked at each other nervously, finally one asking; " Is she dead? "

The one holding her limp hand checked for a pulse, and found one, weak, but present.

" No, I think she had some terrible nightmare and it scared her something awful. Sarah, can you hear me? "

The maid known as Sarah slowly opened her eyes, the glistening trails of tears still fresh on her cheeks. Her green eyes swiveled calmly, almost eerily so until they met the woman's who knelt beside her bed, still remaining silent. At long last she spoke, her voice sounding hoarse and deep as if she had a congestion in her chest.

" I'm fine, just a little nightmare is all. You should get some more sleep, you'll need it for the day's work. "

The other three just exchanged looks before uneasily slipping back into their beds.

" Your sure your alright? " one of them asked her, looking over to their friend who hadn't moved or even seemed to blink.

" Yes, never better. Don't let a silly woman's night terrors make you worry too much. I'm fine. "

Placated enough, the others settled back down, and within fifteen or so minutes were sleeping once again. Sarah, or the woman who had once been Sarah, slipped noiselessly from her bed, nearly stumbling as she rose to her feet. Cursing under her breath in a language she shouldn't have known she tested her feet again, and, once satisfied she could walk without tripping, began to get dressed. Inside, Leetha fumed and hissed at the unpleasant feeling of warm flesh once again housing her mind and spirit, the sluggish movements, the hundred little irritations, itches and discomforts of skin. Getting dressed was an awkward affair, but surmounted by persistence. Soon, Sarah was ready to make her way out onto the early morning streets, dressed in her best skirt, something that Leetha took pride in making her wear to the scene of a double murder and her suicide. A small paring knife, its iron edge dulled but still function was slipped under her waistband, and the rest would be based around Leetha's own powers and cunning. Still, as Sarah rummaged around and pulled a small pouch of her life's saving out of a cupboard and tucked it away too, she should stop by an apothecary's on her way to the tower and pick up some poison for the rats around the bakery in which she worked, a mage as skilled as this elf appeared to be should be dealt with first and quickly, the only real threat to her. The dwarf she would be able to take a little more time with.

After checking her hair in a small mirror beside the door in a annoying fit of habit the maid known as Sarah took one last look around the room, wishing she could spend more time educating her friends on the true meaning of suffering, but there was a job to be done, and done quickly. Sarah closed the door behind her and began to walk with small, measured paces, gradually warming to the activity and taking a more relaxed stride. Her stomach rumbled with hunger and her left shoe was chafing her big toe something fierce because of the way she had jammed her foot into it getting dressed, but she wouldn't have to worry about such trivialities for much longer. A short stop for some powdered Banenettle leaves at the apothecaries and she was only a brief walk and a magic command word away from achieving her goals. A smile tugged at the corners of Sarah's pale rose lips, though the thought of ending three lives here and then eventually traveling back to Lordaeron to hunt down the rest of her living kin hiding in Silvermoon had never previously elicited such a happy reaction.

" Soon, Mal'ganis, " Suul'Dracol murmured to himself, as he often did on this particular subject. " Soon I will be able to pursue my true quarry; plan and plot and scheme to bring about the destruction of that pathetic waste of skin that parades around Northrend like a burgeoning god. Soon… " the dreadlord sighed, tilting his head back and remembering the early days of the war, of the Scourge when they were a loyal dog at the heel of the Burning Legion, when everything seemed to be going so perfectly.

Those were the days of victory on top of victory, of their best laid plans finding success beyond comparison as the humans fled and faltered under their advance. It was in those days that Suul worked alongside Mal'ganis, the younger Nathrezim fearing the elder greatly, as close to admiration that their race born of the chaotic realm of the Nether came to. Mal'ganis tricked and taunted and teased the human paladin Arthas, leading to greater and greater acts of evil in his holy crusade to purge his father's lands of the unclean. It was masterful, it was brilliant, and it was a set-up. When the young knight was at his worst, choosing to butcher his own people rather than see them turn to the Scourge, they handed Mal'ganis to him in a silver platter, letting the tortured ex-paladin slay the gaping dreadlord as some sort of prize. No one of Mal'ganis's stature should ever perish to a mortal's blade, much less because he had been betrayed by his own faction.

That pointless, maddening event left a big scar on the younger Nathrezim, who was used to treachery and deceit, but if one in the most important and useful arm of the Legion could be tossed carelessly away like a bone to a dog, then what was the point of doing your best to aid them? No dreadlord would harm another, of all things that much at least was held sacred amongst their own kind, but it was the Legion itself, under the supposed masterful leadership of Kil'jaeden and Archimonde, that had done this. From that moment onward Suul had wormed his way through the ranks, seeking for a commission that would bring him closer to working towards the downfall of the now rogue death knight turned demi-god. The Shadow Council had seen his desires and promised that he would be sent to Northrend as part of a scouting force if he first struck a major blow against the humans on Kalimdor, and so he was here. Forced to work with limited resources and a tight time-table, Suul had nonetheless made great strides towards achieving his goals, and now stood on the very crux of defeat or victory. He would not fail. He would lead the eventual charge against the Lich King, even if it took decades of planning to do so, and Mal'ganis's death would be avenged when the being who had been Arthas was dead and scattered across the glacier. It would happen, and no elf, no dwarf, no being living, dead, or extra-dimensional would stop him.