~*~ Author's Notes ~*~

I tried a perspective change in this chapter.

And not just form third to first person.

~*~ Chapter 36 ~*~

The Undercity

I was a fool. I was stupid. I was a stupid fool and now my day has come. I sit in the dark under the remains of half a dozen people hanging in a net above me. In the corner the Grand Master Apothecary is conspiring with his lesser as to how they will go about gutting me.

I don't know what I was thinking when I opened my mouth and damned the Banshee Queen, but as promised I rue the day. If only I had some feet to kneel at to recant my brashness. How had I ever though that the color red would save me from her wrath? How had I ever though the Light was stronger than the Queen of the Scourge?

Sitting in the dark and waiting I don't even feel the blood dripping down onto me. Not all the victims in line to become abominations are dead it seems. None of them in that net above me would trade places, I know. They know it as well.

In the other corner the Queen sits staring at me. Alive and plague tainted, it shouldn't be possible. She has said as much, has even gone so far as to cut me with her damned blades to see that I still bleed red. I had tried to plead, to scream for help, to fall at her booted feet and beg for mercy but I could not. Her grip over me is too strong and I know for certain now that everything she had told us is true. The Forsaken are sentient; the Forsaken want revenge; the Forsaken are not Scourge - but what a terrible way to finally see the truth.

Finally she rises to her feet and comes to me where I sit huddled in the corner. She kneels down and I think she is beautiful. Somewhere in the back of my mind I have always though she was beautiful.

"You were a champion of Loraederon (1) once. I was a champion of Silvermoon. We both failed to beat back the Scourge and now we fight each other. I would have it differently. Would you?"

I look up at her with hollow eyes and a hollow heart. Three days I have been down in this sewer, breathing its spores and mold and sitting in the acids and corrosions while I awaited my fate.

"I fight him even in my dreams, Lady. He has a Death Knight where once I had a sister –" My words catch in my throat as my eyes cloud with tears. Her lovely face swims before me and I reach out to touch it. Who's face it is I touch I know not, but the alchemists in the corner stop what they are doing and watch to make sure I do not mean to harm their Queen. The skin is cool but the eyes are fiery hot.

"I would see him pay for every life he has taken," she says. "Mine, yours, the women my Angels kill. I would see him brought low, to taste the ashes of defeat and watch his people and his empire crumble before him as he once made me do. I should be sitting a throne in Silvermoon right now, not a dias in his family's rotting crypts."

All I can do is bob my head up and down like some dumb(2) puppet. It hurts to even talk, my throat raw from crying and screaming I don't even remember doing. The blood dribbles down my face.

"What is your name, champion?"

It takes me a moment to find my voice, "Cid Edgar. They called me Cigar, on account of my dad made cigars and I always smelled like tobacco from working in the drying barns." I hung my head in shame, "I was no champion, only a farmer's son."

"And yet you survived where so many did not. What do you call that?"

I look her in the eye, "I call that knowing where to swing a scythe, Lady. Take the head off and they die. Simple."

"You would be Cigar... Nekov?"

This made me sit strait up and this time I noticed the blood when it dripped down my head. Hastily I wiped it off, "No one has called me that in … a decade or more. Where did you come by it?"

The black mouth smirked, "He said it true. Every time they lose a champion I gain one. They called you Cigar in your youth but when you lead the defense of the Agamand Mills at the age of fourteen they started calling you Nekov, a bastardized version of 'neck off' because that is where you always swung your weapon (3). You lead the defense of the mills and when you were betrayed and the dead came swarming over it was you who lead the survivors out. The ones smart enough not to try to salvage the place. And you say you are no champion?"

"I lost, Lady. What kind of champions are we if we lose?"

She though about that for a second. It seemed strange to have the Banshee Queen actually considering words that had fallen from my unworthy lips, especially after my brashness three days past. I had been foolish then. I was not foolish now. The irony that I had mocked her for losing against Arthas himself when I had barely held out against some of his weaker minions was not lost on me.

"I was a pawn for Silvermoon. You were a pawn for the Agamand family. I have several of them, and their servants, amongst the Forsaken. I have heard their stories, each and every one. They hail you as a champion. They tell stories of you to the new Forsaken, saying that Nekov will come after them if they think to act as the Scourge do and go terrorizing the living without my consent."

Without your consent. Such an odd woman. "I have become a boogy man for the undead? How odd." I shook my head at the absurdity of it.

"I would have you taking off more undead heads, if you would become a champion again."

So many feelings swirled threw me at once, least of all dread, "I… don't understand. You would have me kill your own? Or the Scourge? In truth I never understood the difference."

She would not want to hear this, I knew, but I had to be said, "You want to rid the living from Loraederon the same as Arthas did. You kill the living and raise them up from the dead, the same as Arthas did. You lie about your intentions and you hide your truths, the same as Arthas did. If you can tell me what the difference is, and if it is not exactly what I think they are, then I will kill any number of undead in your service if you would but grant me your forgiveness." My words were soft and true. I would have her forgive me. I knew what it meant to fight the Scourge. So many more of them then there were of you and I had no right to point out that she had failed, especially when I had failed just the same.

"The difference, my fallen champion, is that I give them a choice. Each and every one I have given the choice. If they would follow me then I would have them, and if not then I would let them go."

"You let them leave, you say?" She confirmed, dark hood bobbing in and out of the shadows of the room. If she were this beautiful in death what had she looked like alive when her cheek had been rosy with life and her eyes had sparkled blue with laughter? "What becomes of them who would not serve you?"

"They make their own way without my protection. Some of them form up and ride down the Scourge wherever they find a weakness. Some seek the Light and the final end. Some of them seek their families and I am even told that some have been accepted. But some of them turn against me..."

It was obvious she was disgusted by the prospect of the living and the undead dwelling side-by-side. Myself, I could not imagine it. A husband returning to his living wife and saying, "Yes, I was a murderous thing under the Lich King, but now I am free and I would have you again, my love!" and she would scream and slap him and flee. I could not think that she could embrace such a man. Or a child or a brother. But then I remember… I had a sister once…

"And what of the ones who turn against you?"

"They raid my supply lines, sell my secrets to the Scarlet Zealots, kill my Angels, taint my apothecary's experiments, "she motioned to the men behind her who had since gone back to work, "and worse – much worse! – They constantly attack the living that would cooperate with me. They kill my messengers and taint the food I would send them; they slaughter the horses and poison the hounds; they-" her voice caught "-the things they do to the children. I would rather the Scarlets have the children than them!"

My brow furrowed, "This is the first I have heard of any of these things, Lady. I have been amongst the Scarlet Crusade since the Battle for the Castle and never have I heard that there are undead who fight other undead." My mind was spinning, "If we knew that there were any sort of sentient-ness in any of the Plague tainted, that they would fight you with us, we would have made them allies surely. But then… why do they kill the living? Why do they not join the Campaign?"

She sighed, having explained this many, many times before, "They cannot be Scarlet because your people shun the undead with a zealotous passion that no amount of reason can undo. They would join you if you would have them. I seek a cure for the plague and I could have it by now if not for these undead and their meddling in my affairs!"

I perked up to hear this, "A cure?" For my sister… "This is the fist I have heard of this, Lady. I would do whatever it took to find a cure, if indeed you are searching for one. Our Commander has said nothing of this to us either."

"Of course not. How do you think they keep you fighting against me? Certainly not with the truth of things."

This made me mad, to think that I had been lied to. Not that I would suddenly begin trusting the object of my fear and nightmares out of a desire to find the cure but… "If you are looking for a cure, truly trying to stop the plague and not propagate it as we have been told, then I am yours to command. What will you do about these undead who seek to stop you finding what you seek?"

A brilliant smile bloomed on the Queen's face, red eyes glittering with pleasure, "I promised them a boogy man. I intend to keep my promise."

That night in the filthy crypts of Undercity a man who had once been Cid Edgar knelt at the feet of the Banshee Queen and rose as Nekov, her newest champion. He rode forth on a black warhorse, wielding a black scythe and dressed crown to toe in black mail and leather. Over his chest was a fitted tabard of the Undercity, bearing the falcon shield and shattered face of a crying woman. The man mused, as he dashed down the lane towards the Agamand Mills in search of traitors(4), that he could swear he felt sliding sensations as if he were being pushed into place.

~*~ End Notes ~*~

I'm quit fond of butchering the spelling of this location.

Dumb: Originally meant one is incapable of speech. Mute. In this case I used this word to mean both mute and stupid. See what I did thar?

This is actually short for Kalashnikov, but I didn't see how a Soviet Russian firearm had any place in WoW (despite my reasons for choosing this name) so I worked in part of his back story at the Agamand Mills to explain how he got this nickname.

Quest: "The Haunted Mills"