Westley would long since have lost count of how many times he had hefted yet another heavy and unwieldy shovel or pick or mallet from the corner of the stables, had he ever bothered to count in the first place. The large iron spit felt impossibly heavy in his hands tonight though. What did it matter how many times you had hammered out a hole for a fence post at a time like this?
The Scarlet Monastery was a fortified stronghold with limited space for anything but the bare necessities of normal life. Together with the strict hold of the order in, well, just about everything, that meant that there weren't many people out and about after nightfall when the lack of daylight prevented most outdoor chores.
Staying out of sight in the streets was easy. Westley had over a year of experience trying to stay out of sight as much as he could, after all. Crossing the courtyard was harder. He knew of no other way inside than the main gate of the monastery and there were no windows at ground level. There would be at least fifty long steps out of the shadows before he reached the dark entrance. The only bright side of it was that the gate was unlocked at all times unless enemies had been sighted from the monastery. Far too many errands needed to be carried out inside or outside the structure for it to be deemed worth bothering with.
Halfway across Westley stopped and listened. There were no screams to be heard this time. All was quiet.
As he took the first step inside the hall Westley realised his mistake.
"Where are you going?"
The gate was left unlocked at night. It was not left unguarded.
There were two of them, one on each side in the small gatehouse where they had some cover from the wind. A bearded middle-aged warrior in full plate and a younger in chain mail, both with swords and shields. A knight and his squire, most likely. While the oaths to the Scarlet Crusade supposedly superseded all previous standing and allegiance it was an open secret that most knights who had joined the order kept acting as knights and that it depended on the good graces of enough nobles in other human kingdoms to display a good deal of deference to their position.
All of that could have been fact or fable, it did not change the fact that they had asked Westley a rather obvious question he had not prepared an answer for.
"To the…eh…smithy." was the first thing he came to think about. He carried a metal tool after all. But no one with his wits about him would take an iron spit to the smithy unless it was about to break utterly. Or maybe if the iron was intended to be melted down to be reforged into something else but no such orders had been issued.
However, the man who had questioned Westley was not someone with his wits about him. He was a knight. His hands had grasped lance and sword from before he learned to talk properly, but never a shovel or scythe. He knew a hundred ways to deprive someone of his life but hardly a tenth of all things needed to sustain it over a hard winter and a hungering spring.
He was completely ready to believe than an uncouth and filthy peasant like the slow-witted stablehand before him would take a slightly rusty iron spit to the smithy for some unimportant reason or another.
"Off with you then, and stay out of the chapel. In the name of the Light!" The last greeting sounded more like an admonishment. Westley repeated the words and hurried inside and to the left where the stairs he had recently learned to dread led him to the underside of the monastery.
He had been to the actual smithy close by many times with a bent or broken thing of one kind or the other but he was not quite at home among all the winding paths leading to storerooms and work areas and most of all to Brother Wroth's abysmal cellar closest to the courtyard.
Westley was shaking. There was no denying it. He grabbed the spit with both hands as if that would steady him but it only made him think of the time he wasted. He did not have much time.
The door to the cellar was not locked, he knew that since before. But it was hardly any easier to open because of that. He found himself staring like in a dream at the small line of reddish light that seeped out from underneath the door. Was Wroth inside now? He should have heard something.
But what if he shouldn't? What if Wroth was toying with the undead elf girl and keeping quiet only to surprise her when she thought he would be gone?
What if he knew Westley was coming and was waiting just behind this door?
What would he do?
Westley could always make up some sort of lie, that he was sent to fetch something, that he had heard an unexplained sound. That he had reconsidered and wanted to give the undead 'thing' what it deserved like a true son of the Light. But he knew inside that Wroth would see through him. The man was terrifying not just in the way he displayed fervent zeal in torturing but just as much for how it was almost like Wroth could smell a persons fear on him.
Wroth was with him whether he was there or not. And maybe he would always be.
NO!
Westley closed his eyes and kicked the cursed door open with all his might. It swung open and crashed into the wall with an almost painful sound that seemed to echo in the otherwise quiet cellars.
Wroth was not there.
The coals were still red. Their cruel sheen left the room covered in long shadows and dark spots and corners everywhere. Westley's eyes adapted slowly to the gloom.
She was still there. But she didn't move.
He approached slowly, one hesitant step at a time. What could an undead elf do? Could she even speak Common, and was there anything he could say that she would listen to?
He could barely see in the gloom but he thought that her eyes appeared mostly closed, not as in sleep but as in rest, or disinterest. He could hear no breaths though. But then, she was supposed to be undead and they did after all not breathe.
Her arms and feet were fettered by heavy chains, inscribed by symbols of the Light that glowed white-yellow but were not enough to illuminate any other part of the room. She was stretched out along a thick bench that Wroth had adopted as his makeshift torture rack. It had acquired a good amount of scorch marks by now. The legs were as thick as the beams in the stable and the chains were bolted to each.
Westley hadn't prepared any detailed plan for how he would break either them or the chains without alerting the entire monastery, but what could he do? He raised the spit high in two hands, aimed for the chain link closest to the leg, and…
Her eyes opened in a crimson flash.
"Fucking idiot."
The spit clattered to the floor and Westley staggered back, with his own eyes fixed on hers.
They shone.
They actually shone, red like the still smouldering coals in the dark.
"He's hung the keys by the door." It was like her dry and tired, not to say outright bored, voice carried with it the rolling of a red pair of eyes. "The hook on the right side. So I can always see them hanging just out of my reach, you see."
Westley blinked.
She had spoken Common, quite clearly.
"Do you intend to stand there all night, or are you in fact here to have your share of the fun with me?"
Shit!
Westley scrambled for the door, reached up to get the keys but in his haste dropped them on the floor. He bent down and searched the pitch black part of the room with his hands, finding nothing until the light grew and he finally found them and…
The light grow from the lantern held aloft in the hand or Brother Wroth.
Westley turned on the spot like a hare before a wolf but Wroth was too quick for him. Westley's hand flew out as he felt his throat constrict from the hand grabbing his collar from behind.
"Little traitor boy." Wroth mused quietly in his worst kind of voice, the one that promised long and deliberate pain being inflicted. He sounded…pleased.
Westley felt himself pushed forward and he staggered and almost fell, hitting his knee on something and receiving a kick at his back that pushed all the air out of his lungs.
"You pathetic. Little. Shit." Wroth bent down to pick up a poker that had been left half buried in the coals as he approached Westley. The tip glowed faintly and Wroth seemed to tower over him beyond all sense and reason, like a demonic monstrosity that was made of fire and darkness and knew no mercy or compassion.
Which Wroth did not.
Westley crawled backwards on the floor while dozens of memories passed before him. Wroth that pushed him into the ground the first day he had arrived. Wroth that kicked his wheelbarrow of unremarkable but carefully harvested cabbage into a ditch and left him to explain a broken wheel axle and a mud-covered load to the quartermaster. Wroth that above all hated Westley for caring about his horses and called him a deviant for wasting his false compassion on something that was not a human, and therefore a 'something' and not a 'someone'.
Wroth who had given the order to…
Westley felt something hard and sharp on the floor behind him. The keys.
Wroth was coming closer, making no haste and smiling contently like at a bottle of exquisite wine or a delicious meal presented before him. Westley was crawling further back, bumping into the rack.
He reached blindly in the air behind him and found cold, statue-like, smooth skin and coarse iron and…
Wroth casually punched him in the stomach, and Westley groaned in pain.
"I will make you watch tomorrow, you know." Wroth smiled, still sounding immensely satisfied. "I will make them scream their lungs out. I will drive a spike into each of their hooves and watch them lie there on the ground where they rightly belong. I will gouge out their eyes and make you eat them, and then I will do the same to you, and the last sight you see will be your Light-damned horses as I cut open their bellies and drive a red-hot poker into them."
"Don't you fucking touch them!"
In response Wroth raised the iron poker in his hand, as if inspecting it.
"This one, maybe…" he grinned.
Click.
There was a rattling of chains and a metallic clatter.
Wroth raised his hand to strike down at Westley, oblivious to anything else.
A pale hand caught his arm in an iron grip and a voice unlike anything Westley had ever heard or imagined reverberated across the entire room.
"You will not touch him."
The elf squeezed and the iron poker fell out of Wroth's hand to the sound of bone cracking. Westley looked in disbelief as she lifted Wroth with a snarl and hurled him into the wall beside the door. He hit it with an audible thud and slid down to the floor.
A string of curses drew Westley's attention to the elf. She was struggling with the key and the lock keeping her feet fettered to the bench. The chains were as thick as the ones that had kept her arms bound and the lock was black and rusted. Both had been inscribed with symbols of the Light. They seemed to cause the elf great discomfort for she would retract a hand or a finger at times as if she had touched something hot that burned her.
"Let me." Westley said, unsteadily. "The Light will not harm the living."
The elf looked at him and quirked an eyebrow, but handed him the keys nonetheless.
The lock was rusty, and Westley suddenly became afraid that he would damage it further. What if he broke the key? He turned it back and forth, trying to soften up whatever corroded lump that was impeding the key.
"The Light…has forsaken you, boy!"
Wroth rose, furious and more terrible than ever. Blood and dirt was covering his face and in the darkness he appeared more undead than living on his own. He clutched a long knife in his hand.
Westley would never be free from him.
His breath echoed in his ears when he bent down. His heartbeat echoed in his ears when he absently, indifferently as if watching himself from a distance, picked up the still red-hot iron poker of Wroth.
Wroth had spent the last year making prisoners scream from the cellars and bullying the servants who were not sworn brothers or sisters of the order.
Westley had spent the last year hauling stones and digging ditches.
How surprisingly light that tiny rod of metal was in comparison to a woodsman's axe after half a day's gruelling work.
"You would stand against your own kind…for that thing?" Wroth hissed.
Westley's grip hardened.
He had broken his back and endured all the spite and all the humiliation for two things and two things only.
And Wroth would have them butchered and tortured for no reason at all but his own amusement.
How fucking dared he?
"You…are not my kind."
Wroth held up his knife but the tiny thing did not stop the iron rod. Wroth cried out and dropped the weapon. Westley struck down again, and again, but Wroth was at his core still a trained soldier, and old reflexes finally resurfaced for him to turn away and make Westley hit his shoulder and upper back with glancing blows rather than a bone-crushing impact.
He did however not turn fast enough when the rest of the chains clattered to the floor and the blurry shadow of the elf swept past Westley and slammed into the wall with Wroth's throat between her fingers.
Wroth…withered…in her grip, Westley could not describe it better. He shrunk and shrivelled, as if he suddenly aged decades worth or if all the fluids of his body evaporated, and his skin turned from red to pale to grey.
"I am Cyndia Hawkspear, dark ranger of the Banshee Queen and the Forsaken. And I am not a 'thing'."
As Wroth succumbed to whatever power the elf made use of, Westley could see burns and cuts and bruises all over her close and smoothen, torn skin reknitting itself, until she looked not completely healed but certainly far less injured.
"He should be proud. After all, you did learn to use that poker."
Westley could only stare at her. If he had ever had a plan for this moment it was hopelessly lost.
"…what…what now?"
"Run, Bad-at-believing Westley."
Anya's hand on her forehead was the first thing Jaina registered. Then she registered why Anya's cool hand was currently just about the worlds most valuable item.
Ow.
Who had set fire to her head when she wasn't looking? No, who had rebuilt her head into a baking oven when she wasn't looking?
Jaina whined from the pain of thinking and of just being, and tried desperately to remember where she was and just what she had been doing and where here was and… It was so hard.
"Shhh…" Anya cradled her head and put her other hand over Jaina's neck. It was calm and soothing and it was something real for her mind to latch on to. Anya was here. Anya was keeping watch.
The dark ranger seemed to read her mind without difficulty for she started to whisper softly into her ear and answer all the unbearably complicated questions that pestered Jaina's mind.
"You dozed off for maybe half an hour. We are still in the cottage and Clea and Kitala have brought some water and cloth for your back. They are out looking for herbs and potions for you right now and Sylvanas is ordering people around. Lyana is boiling water behind us and we are going to clean up your back properly. Do you want some tea?"
"No…too warm…"
"Then have some cold water." It was Lyana's voice, and a cup was placed in Jaina's hand on the table.
Right. Those stupid shackle things. And heavy.
Jaina tried to gather her strength and her fluttering, disobedient thoughts that escaped her. Water. Drink. Needed to sit up…
Three hands were carefully raising Jaina to a seated position, and a fourth placed the cup against her lips. She drank unsteadily, and probably spilled some over herself.
"Good. Now I need you to keep yourself upright like this. Can you do that, Lady Proudmoore?" Lyana asked while she swept Jaina's hair out of the way.
"Try…"
"Anya is next to you. Hold on to her. I'm going to wipe away the dirt and blood from your wounds as best I can and that will hurt a bit."
Lyana started gently enough by slowly dabbing and wiping around the stinging lines over her upper back. She kept talking while she did it and while Jaina was too exhausted to process what Lyana said the voice was comforting to listen to. But it still hurt when she started to work on the cuts in earnest.
"The wounds are dirty so I need to get the worst off. It hurts a lot because the blood has caked. Clamp down on Anya's hand. Crush it to powder."
"No… Anya is kind…"
"Sweet thing. Hold on to her now."
Lyana continued down Jaina's back, wiping her clean with almost painfully hot water. Jaina was starting to feel a little better from it. That quickly changed when Lyana moved on to the next stage of her treatment.
"Lady Proudmoore, I am going to clean your wounds with a wipe drenched in spirits now."
Jaina twitched at her words.
"What…spirits? Like necromancy? I don't…"
Both Anya and Lyana chuckled, and it was beautiful to hear, but Jaina was still confused.
"No, the kind you drink. Clea found a bottle of something strong in one house, it will help prevent infection."
"So my healers…get drunk. On the job…no less…" Jaina managed to quip, until her head reminded her harshly that she was still in no shape to string sentences together. Then she gasped when Lyana started to apply the wipe soaked in alcohol, and didn't actually stop herself from clenching Anya's hand for all she was worth.
"Good, just a little more." Lyana encouraged and Jaina thrived on the praise, too tired to care about whether or not that was silly of her. Lyana and the other rangers had saved her life, damn it, and currently the only way Jaina could show her gratitude was to do as she was told.
"There we are."
Jaina could hear Lyana and Anya whispering about something, too low for her to discern the words until Lyana spoke up again.
"Lady Proudmoore, I have cleaned you up as best I could but unfortunately we don't have any salves or potions available to help your skin healing. I am going to wrap you up now as best I can to keep the dirt out at least."
Anya kept her hands on Jaina's head and neck while Lyana guided her with little touches to lean back or forth while she bandaged Jaina with cut strips of someone's bedsheets. Lyana was deft and nimble and did not disturb Jaina any more than she had to, but she was also very thorough. Thorough enough to fix Jaina's bandages both above and below her breasts, and with a couple of strips crossed between them to keep it tight. And of course Jaina's Tides-damned nipples had to stiffen in the cold air while Anya was right beside her running her hand in small circles over Jaina's neck, and Lyana was leaning over her shoulder to tie the bandages together. Or, to tell the truth the air was rather warm by now because the rangers had kept the stove going, but there had to be a draft somewhere and it apparently hit Jaina right in the front when Lyana asked her to arch her back so she could tie the last knots together just below Jaina's breasts.
And of course Clea, Kitala and Sylvanas had to pick that exact moment to come back to the cottage.
Jaina could swear that her fever had increased. With a little luck it might be enough to make her evaporate into a discreet puff of smoke that could escape out through the chimney. She was immensely grateful that the present lamps had let Lyana work easier but she still couldn't help feeling a bit overly illuminated.
"I see that we arrive at just the right time…" Sylvanas noted smoothly, and Jaina blessed the fact that she was at least facing away from them. She felt like she would probably burst into a fireball if she had to come face to face with Sylvanas like this.
"Yes, we're just about done here." Lyana nodded and rose. "Any luck?"
"Just clothes." Kitala said regretfully. "We looked everywhere around the keep, I promise, and Kalira's squad had looked too. There's not even any herbs "
"Fucking savages!" Lyana cursed. "How can they be so stupid?!"
"Maybe they think all herbalism unclean - heresy and witchcraft and whatever - and choose to only allow healing from the Light?" Kitala suggested, which led to Lyana muttering something no doubt extremely foul.
"We brought these, anyway." Clea stepped forward to put a pile of various clothes on the table in front of Jaina. "There are some blankets and cloaks in there, and some shirts we could cut the sleeves on to put on while she's wearing those shackles." Clea whispered mostly to Lyana, but after looking at Jaina's tired eyes and seemingly without thought placing her hand against Jaina's forehead she withdrew it with a start. "Belore! We've got to get her home!"
"Lyana?" Sylvanas asked.
"I agree, Dark Lady. I may be able to cook up something from whatever is growing around here but we have no way of knowing what we can count on finding. Our best bet is getting Lady Proudmoore to the Undercity quickly and the stocks of the apothecaries even if they're dwindling. Besides, she will never rest easy anywhere in this town."
"Then I will ready the horses. Lady Proudmoore, we ride at once. You will have myself and my squadron as protection."
Sylvanas left as abruptly as she had entered and Jaina felt both relieved and missing the Dark Lady's presence. Having Anya and Lyana help her get dressed was marginally less embarrassing, at least the damage was already done anyway in regard to them, Jaina reckoned as she sluggishly got to her feet and let them help her. In all fairness she was probably not so much dressed as draped with clothes and blankets due to the hindering shackles. But eventually she was weighed down by enough layers that it should keep out the cold for quite some time.
"It's not a glittersky gown, but it will keep you warm at least." Lyana said almost apologetically.
"A what?"
"Glittery Skies sold the best silk gowns in Quel'Thalas. They used to cost more than we earned in a year."
Jaina swayed when she stood up too quickly, and a wave of nausea almost made her double over and throw up. Anya caught her in her arm and Jaina leaned heavily on the dark ranger until the room stopped spinning and her vision returned. She let Anya half lead her outside where Sylvanas waited with the three skeletal mounts that had carried Jaina and the two original Scarlet prisoners from the Undercity. To Jaina's small relief Sylvanas made no comment about her no doubt laughable appearance wrapped in layers of blankets. Instead she only beckoned to Clea to give her one of the spare ones and draped it across the saddle so it hung down on both sides like some sort of improvised barding.
Jaina blinked in the darkness and steeled herself for the ordeal of mounting up, which even with a ranger boosting her appeared like a ludicrously taxing effort at the moment. Sylvanas would have none of that however, and before Jaina had time to think the Banshee Queen had scooped her up in her arms and put her on the nearest horse like she weighed nothing. Sylvanas proceeded to wind the slung blanket around Jaina's legs, which her other attire had left relatively exposed, and then jumped into the saddle behind her while the other rangers secured their small packs of food and spare clothes for Jaina and mounted the two other of the skeletal steeds.
"We make for the Undercity without rest. We leave nobody behind and we stop for nothing. Anya and Lyana take point, Clea and Kitala behind me."
The dark rangers saluted her.
Jaina felt Sylvanas shift a little behind her.
"I will hold you up while we ride, Lady Proudmoore. Lean back against me and try to rest. Sleep if you can." She wrapped Jaina's cloak tighter around her and without any visible command their skeletal mounts took off into the night.
As tired as she was, Jaina tried her best to sit somewhat properly but without a real saddle - let alone a real horse – riding in the normal sense of the word proved impractical at best. Their mounts did not even move quite like living horses and their gait was quick but not as fluent. Jaina soon gave in to her tiredness and leaned back against Sylvanas, practically held in place by the Banshee Queen's arms around her when Jaina slowly began to relax and slump against Sylvanas. With no need for reins, and apparently perfectly able to keep herself steady by her legs and feet alone, Sylvanas could devote all her attention to keeping Jaina comfortable.
The vague silhouette of the surrounding forest passed by like something unreal in a dream. Only the sharp thuds of hooves on the ground and the rustle of the wind in the trees came to Jaina and she drifted in and out of some sort of half-slumber. The night air was a relief for her head and the thick layers of clothing she was wrapped in made her reclined position against Sylvanas mostly comfortable. There was however an unexpected drawback of sitting in such an improvised saddle on a mount that was made of only bones. Where a normal saddle and stirrups served to distribute the weight of the rider the padding over the skeletal horse's spine did not excel at that task, and the more Jaina tried to ignore it, the more aware did she become of how the rapid movement of their mount caused said spine to…impact…against Jaina's middle parts.
That in itself would have been mortifying enough on it's own, but with Jaina seated right in front of Sylvanas it was pure agony. Nor could she really gain any purchase to shift her position enough to relieve herself of the distraction, and if anything only succeeded in squirming in Sylvanas' arms.
Tides, she was half lying in the arms of the Banshee Queen of Lordaeron feeling…that.
"Sleep, little mage…" Sylvanas whispered into her ear. In that voice.
Tides, Jaina could never say no to that voice. And she was so, so tired…
Jaina slowly drifted away in Sylvanas' arms, dreaming strange dreams.
When riding out they had marched at similar speed as the quick march of the escorting rangers and also, as Jaina sluggishly realised, slow enough for the hidden ranger squadrons to keep scouting ahead and around them and bring up the deathguard reinforcements. Galloping without cease during night and day was something else entirely. Jaina had woken up in earnest somewhere after dawn when the world around her was grey with mist and hardly less dream-like than during the night. She was sore along the inside of her thighs and stiff in the wet cold that had slowly crept inside her despite the cloak and blankets.
When she felt Jaina stirring Sylvanas whistled sharply and the horses slowed down. Jaina could make out a groove of trees – somewhat bony without most of their leaves – but couldn't tell whether they were part of a forest or alone among fields and meadows.
"Slept well?" Sylvanas asked and hit the ground just as their horse stopped. She held up her arms to let Jaina ungracefully glide down into them and be lowered to the ground. Jaina found that so long as she didn't move or strain her shoulders too much the ache from her wounds stayed notably duller.
"Ye…yes, think so…" Jaina mumbled, still disoriented and unsteady. She had certainly slept better than she would ever have expected after last days horrible events but she wouldn't exactly have called her night peaceful. Jaina had been chased by one disturbing dream after the other. In one she had been riding bareback across Boralus with Sylvanas behind only to look down and realise that she had somehow – the way such things could happen in dreams - forgotten to put on her clothes. In another Jaina had been back in her own dungeons in Lordaeron with Anya and Sylvanas chaining her to the wall and Sylvanas admonishing her for running away. Then the wall was suddenly a luxury bed in a palatial suite that belonged to the Banshee Queen and Anya and Lyana were tending to her back in some way that felt extremely pleasant while Clea sat beside petting Kitala, who had become an actual cat.
Jaina yawned. It was of course easy to trace all the fragments that her stupid brain had mashed together into that ridiculous mess. Master Antonidas had once called dreams the "disordered preparatory committees of the High Council of Consciousness" and Jaina could at the moment quite agree with that assessment. She had felt very embarrassed about the way the saddle felt – Tides, it would be the more of the same all day – and of being half undressed when Lyana tended to her wounds. And being a prisoner of the Scarlets was probably enough to leave anyone with nightmares for years, so Jaina was only grateful that it had been Sylvanas and her rangers doing the capturing in the dream rather than Sister Grete. Maybe it was her and Anya's earlier jokes about how she would keep Jaina in captivity with the door open that had shone through. In the same way Jaina's mind had probably blended her earlier mis-speaking about being invited to Sylvanas' yet unknown rooms (not her bed!) with how Clea had urged Kitala to let Jaina comfort her and the way Anya and Lyana had taken care of her wounds last night. Silly and absurd, like the word games where each participant wrote a part of a sentence without seeing the rest.
Sylvanas was looking questioningly at her, and Jaina realised she must have appeared a little vacant when reminiscing.
"Sorry, I just had some odd dreams tonight, that's all…"
"Were they…unpleasant?" Sylvanas asked and appeared unusually hesitant.
Tides, what was Jaina going to say?!
"I, uh, d-dreamt about why I prefer my accommodations in the Undercity to those in Hearthglen." Jaina stuttered.
Sylvanas frowned and looked very displeased with something.
"There was a moment when you appeared to moan something but I could not catch what. I should have woken you up."
No, no, no, Sylvanas evidently thought Jaina had been reliving last day quite literally in her dreams!
"No! Not at all…I mean…" Jaina took a deep breath. "It was good of you to let me sleep. Thanks for keeping me in the saddle all night, Dark Lady, I really appreciate it." Sylvanas still seemed unconvinced. "I wasn't actually dreaming of the Scarlets as such but about being back in Lordaeron with you all."
Where you chained me to the wall and then to your apparently opulent queen-sized bed… No! Think of something else!
"We are about a day's hard ride from the Undercity so hopefully you will be able to rest in your quarters there tonight, Lady Proudmoore. And you are very welcome. It is…not troublesome to ride with you."
At this point the other rangers had approached and eyed Jaina with concern.
"How do you feel, Lady Proudmoore?" Lyana asked.
"Mostly cold and stiff, I'm afraid." Jaina answered, and did absolutely not want to delve further into her rest or lack thereof during the night with all the rangers assembled. "Still tired. And, well…my back hurts."
They all tensed up at her last statement and Jaina was sure Sylvanas was on the verge of baring her fangs. None said anything further on the matter however and Sylvanas proceeded to hand out assignments.
"Clea and Kitala, make some breakfast. Anya and Lyana, scout the area and see if you can forage anything useful. Lady Proudmoore, come with me. I want to take a look at your back."
While the others got to work Jaina followed Sylvanas to her eerily still horse and leant forward over it after removing her cloak and blankets. Sylvanas carefully pulled Jaina's shirt up and started to slowly roll it up along her back. When she had gotten halfway Jaina suddenly shook, and involuntarily recoiled from her.
Sylvanas had taken a step back and held her hands up at her sides with the palms out placatingly when Jaina turned around and realised that she was panting heavily.
"I…I didn't mean…" Jaina begun.
"Stop." Sylvanas cut her off.
Jaina tried to breathe deeply and steady herself. Her thoughts, or her body, had really rushed ahead of her and she was currently at a loss for how or why. She had never been repelled by Sylvanas before. She certainly didn't want to be.
Sylvanas, though, seemed to have a clearer idea than Jaina of what was going on.
"Slowly now." Sylvanas commanded. "Retrace your thoughts. Observe them, do not judge yourself for what you were thinking or feeling. You bent forward to lean against my horse. What went through your mind?"
Jaina tried to do as instructed. She knew she had a habit of over-analyzing things so she spoke her thoughts out loud instead, which Sylvanas encouraged.
"I thought that I didn't want to get cold, but I also wouldn't want to be bleeding through the bandages."
"Continue."
"I…I felt embarrassed about showing myself before you, Dark Lady."
Sylvanas' expression betrayed no emotion, beyond a small nod at Jaina to keep talking.
"And I…wanted you to look at me…" Jaina was sure she was red as an apple despite the cold. "I…liked being cared for…"
"This was before you leaned forward, correct?"
Jaina nodded.
"I guess I…it's just stupid…I guess I thought that…" Jaina coughed and had difficulty finding her voice. "…if you would have…" she whispered.
"You thought that if I would want to do what they did against you I would be likely to start by making you bend forward in a manner resembling how they had you tied to the wall in that Sun-forsaken cellar."
"I…she…" Jaina whispered. She couldn't find the words. She wanted so much to find the words to tell Sylvanas how she was not the repulsive one, but the words stuck in her throat.
Sylvanas did not move and Jaina felt that she was still waiting for her.
"She…hurt me…" Jaina whispered.
"Good."
Jaina stared wide-eyed at Sylvanas and didn't believe her ears. Good?
"Face your fears, Lady Proudmoore. Know them, or they will always hold you in their grip." The Banshee Queen looked at her intensely. She was not lecturing Jaina, she was giving her an order. Then Sylvanas' features grew softer and she held out her hand, but otherwise remained passive, until Jaina longingly stumbled forward and pressed Sylvanas' hand to her.
"You did good, my mage." Sylvanas whispered and Jaina melted from the words of praise and Sylvanas placing her hand protectively on Jaina's neck. "They violated you, and I will eradicate their pathetic order for it. I will let the Scourge Raise Sister Grete so I can kill her myself ten times over, and then I will let loose Anya." Sylvanas growled into her ear while she held Jaina close.
"I'd prefer it…if she stayed dead forever."
"Spoilsport." Sylvanas husked and Jaina couldn't stop herself from laughing. Tides, she was getting a headache.
"Lady Proudmoore, you have nothing to prove and you owe nothing to me." Sylvanas said seriously. "Would it help you if it was Lyana doing this instead?"
Jaina shook her head. "I want it to be you."
She edged out of Sylvanas' arms and slowly bent forward over their skeletal horse. This time, Jaina did not shy away when Sylvanas carefully rolled up her shirt, and she sighed heavily with relief over it.
"Lyana sure knows what she is doing." Sylvanas commented and traced the outline of the dressing with her finger, which made Jaina shiver. "You have bled during the night but it has not soaked through completely. I believe this will last you well until we are home."
Sylvanas helped Jaina get her clothes draped on her again. It was high time, for Jaina was shivering in the wet and chilly air.
"Let us get your blood flowing. Walk with me." Sylvanas suggested and offered Jaina her arm.
Jaina gloomily assented. As weak as she felt, she realised it would do her no good to stand still and only get colder.
As Sylvanas led her along over some open ground Jaina noticed that the sun had come up. Pale and hidden beneath the shrouds of mist, but still a welcome sight. The vaguely outlined trees and the foggy air seemed to glow faintly in yellow, and she imagined herself warming from the few rays that filtered through the dampness around her.
"Your realm…" Jaina leaned against Sylvanas. "…can still be beautiful, Queen of Lordaeron."
"Who knew that the scholars of Dalaran were such mushy romantics?" Sylvanas smirked.
"Clearly you have never witnessed Archmage Modera give her lectures about the Basics of Elementary Enchantments. Half the apprentices dream of enchanting carpets to fly and the other half of enchanting the first half to ditch the boring lesson and go out with them."
"Mages and rangers have more in common than most people are aware of, then. And that is a tautology, by the way."
"What is?"
"The basics of elementary enchantments? If it is the basics it is surely already established that it is elementary."
"What – no, no, no, the course is called Elementary Enchantments and it has three stages – basic, advanced and masterly. Archmage Modera implemented that standard of classification in all apprenticeship courses, it's logical and actually rather useful."
"Masterly Elementary Enchantments? That one sounds like a contradiction in terms." Sylvanas pretended to give it some deep thought. "Or maybe just dumb?"
"I shouldn't have expected a moss-eating highwaywoman to grasp the finer points of the arcane mysteries." Jaina tried to huff and put her nose in the air. "I dare you to repeat that before Archmage Modera, by the way. I'm sure you would make a fine sheep."
In that instant the call of a bird cut through the quiet autumn morning. Sylvanas whistled through her hands in some way that mimicked the sound.
"Breakfast is being served, My Lady. Shall we return?"
They did not go back the way they had come but Sylvanas guided her unerringly through the mist to where Clea had lit a small fire. She handed Jaina a cup filled with steaming water and…pine boughs?
"Pine needle tea." Clea explained. "That's usually what is available out in the woods. Try it, they are quite decent so soon after summer."
Jaina took a careful sip. It was, she decided, an acquired taste but it was warm and tasted fresh at least and she hoped it would help her feel better. To her surprise Clea handed her a piece of buttered bread next.
"The Scarlets are strangers to honest work but even those idiots knew how to bake bread." Jaina took it but only glared at it. She would prefer not to eat or wear or even see anything that had belonged to their order, she felt almost unclean touching it. Or traitorous, somehow. She would most of all have liked to toss it away and stomp on it, pointless though it may be.
"Look at it as a grain of the compensation you are rightly owed for how they have injured you." Clea pointed out, apparently reading Jaina all too easily. "I promise we will get you a juicy fish when we're home." she added with such amusement that Jaina relented. If they could go back to search the keep for her sake she would at least eat the spoils of their efforts.
The bread was in fact not bad and there was enough tea to almost get her warm again. Without her mana Jaina was no more frost mage than the next person and as susceptible to the cold as most people, even though she had gotten used to wet weather after growing up in stormy Kul Tiras.
Sylvanas whistled again, louder this time, and Anya and Lyana appeared shortly, but unfortunately with little to show for their efforts. Anya did however hand Jaina a bundle of slightly shrivelled, but still green, leaves.
"Chew on these if your throat hurts, some say it helps a bit." Jaina bit off a small piece. It tasted faintly like lemons, at least if you could imagine adding lemons to a salad.
They readied themselves for travelling, which in Jaina's case amounted to visiting the nearest bush, and Sylvanas once again mostly lifted her into the saddle and wrapped her up.
"The mist will cover us for a couple of hours at the most, one more likely! Same formation as before!" Sylvanas ordered and set them off again along the road that Jaina could now discern.
The landscape was rural and she could recognize the typical Lordaeronian building here and there, but they were all in ruins just as when she had walked with Sylvanas along the road from the north. The sight was depressing.
"Are there any birds left in these parts of Lordaeron?" Jaina asked over her shoulder, until the stinging pain across her back reminded her to keep still.
"Quite few, I would guess. The blight killed both plants and bugs, there is little for them to eat. Fletching arrows is a pain nowadays."
"I did hear the call of the dark ranger thrush earlier this morning, though. A very rare species, actually." Jaina said impishly.
"Ha! Good call, Lady Proudmoore! Me and my rangers should practice imitating stray ghouls or zombies instead to not arouse suspicion."
Jaina was about to reply but the chill air made her cough violently instead. She felt the unmistakeable swelling in her throat that signalled a beginning cold. Resigned, Jaina reached for a few of the leaves Anya had given her.
"One at a time. They will have to last for the rest of the way." Sylvanas reminded her, and pulled Jaina's cloak a little tighter around her. "Chew on them slowly."
Like yesterday evening, Jaina tried to sit upright but Sylvanas saw through it and resolutely pulled her back into a more relaxed position. Or it would have been, were it not for the spine that had the gall to be situated at the back of a horse's skeleton. Now that she was fully awake, and in addition prevented from talking herself out of it, Jaina became acutely aware of every single indecent thud against her when their skeletal mount galloped tirelessly at a speed that very few living horses would have been able to keep for long.
Was Sylvanas noticing anything? She made no sign of it but then again the Banshee Queen was incredibly good a masking her feelings when she so wished.
For a moment Jaina wondered if Sylvanas could have orchestrated this particular aspect of their trip in order to have fun with Jaina, but she dismissed the notion altogether. Sylvanas did obviously derive a wicked kind of enjoyment from keeping Jaina blushing and unbalanced, and was undeniably good at it, but Jaina could not imagine her letting private amusements interfere with what she saw as her duties. The Banshee Queen took her job very seriously.
Not that it would stop the Banshee Queen from having a good laugh at Jaina if she actually did notice.
Tides, Jaina needed a distraction from the distraction, and from her increasingly sore throat as well.
"Dark Lady, can you tell me a little about your kingdom? What has it been like, have the Scarlets hunted you all the time?" That should be a grim enough subject to keep her mind off…other things.
"Are you trying to whisk away all my military secrets now, my sly Lady of Theramoore?" Sylvanas teased. "I would have thought you had had your fill of the red-clad bastards for quite some time."
"You were the one who told me to face my fears, and I need something to think about instead of my th…" At that point Jaina was overtaken by another fit of coughs, underlining her point as good as anything. She put another of Anya's leaves in her mouth and chewed irritably, feeling sicker by the moment.
"Fair enough." Sylvanas pulled Jaina up slightly so that Jaina's ear was right in front of her mouth. "I have better give you something to think about before you talk yourself into pneumonia."
And Sylvanas began to tell about the Lich Kings unbreakable control that had finally, unexpectedly, broken and how she had found the strength of will or sheer anger to tear herself free. She tensed notably when mentioning Arthas and Jaina almost regretted her selfish request, but Jaina's presence seemed to make Sylvanas remember herself, and calm herself enough to continue her recounting of the rebellion against the Scourge and the narrow escape of Arthas thanks to his lich's intervention. Jaina then kept listening with increasing fascination to how the Forsaken had rallied behind their new queen with less than the tattered clothes on their bodies only to find a world united in it's hatred against everything undead.
What Sylvanas described sounded like Theramoore with her father's hostile fleet on one side and the Burning Legion still at large on the other. Jaina could not even begin to imagine what it must have been like to regain your free will only to be thrust into such an existence. How could Sylvanas remain so incredibly strong through it all?
The Banshee Queen had taken a break from her storytelling to peer at their surroundings as if she expected a lich or two to be crouching in the nearest ditch. When the coast, and the road, seemed clear Jaina leaned back against Sylvanas' shoulder to look up impatiently at her. She felt quite childish for it but didn't care at the moment. Just like a good book, a good story was something Jaina was utterly incapable of leaving be. Sylvanas did cast her a meaningful glance but after Jaina obediently started to slowly chew on another leaf (they were actually probably helping a bit) she took pity on her and continued her account of the Forsaken. Sylvanas did not go into great detail about herself, and Jaina recognized someone downplaying her own role considerably when she saw it, but rather put forward the exploits of the other rangers and the human Forsaken to which Lordaeron had been home even in life.
They made few stops and hurried Jaina through a couple of hasty meals and more tea, which was her major source of warmth. She failed to eat much as the day progressed, her sore and swelling throat disagreeing with the dry field rations that made up her lunch and dinner. When the day was turning into evening Jaina was bone tired and huffing and coughing at everything around her. Had it really been just a day since she had walked down into Hearthglen? It felt more like a year had passed.
Sylvanas had stopped her recounting when even Jaina's boundless curiosity was beginning to fail and hung another blanket around her. Jaina probably appeared more like a tent than anything else she reckoned, but quickly forgot any further thoughts about it when the first drop of rain hit her.
Sylvanas had noticed it too and seemed to hurry their horses for a moment until thinking better of it and resuming their only slightly less break-neck current pace. The rain was no light summery drizzle but dark and threatening clouds drifted in all over the sky to obscure the setting sun and before long it grew to a deluge that soaked through layer after layer of Jaina's clothing. The rangers used up every spare piece they had brought but it didn't suffice for long and Jaina begun to shiver and cough more frequently. The helpful leaves had unfortunately been spent sometime in the afternoon.
They reached the capital in complete darkness. Jaina hadn't noticed any sentries or the rangers signalling anyone but she was hardly in the mood to care.
Sylvanas hit the ground outside the Lordaeron keep before their mount had stopped. Without further prompting she pulled Jaina down and simply carried her in her arms, blankets and all, into the dark halls and down the stairs to the royal Lordaeronian dungeons and the one that was Jaina's.
It was barely a day since Jaina had been forced down the stairs to the corresponding portion of Hearthglen's keep.
But she did not so much as wince.
Because Sylvanas was with her and her rangers were with her, and with them Jaina had nothing to fear.
With them, this was home.