II.
While getting Proudmoore to listen was Sylvanas' sole aim in that moment, it had still surprised her to hear those words come from another's mouth so easily. Although in hindsight it had not been very long since she had died, the mistrust and disdain from others had become so routine at this point that Sylvanas had let go of the expectation of being treated with actual respect a long time ago. Truthfully, that was perhaps one of the hardest things to get used to. When Sylvanas was Ranger-General of Quel'Thalas, others valued her words— they looked at her with respect and took what she had to say at face value. Ever since becoming the Queen of the Forsaken though, often many would reach for her underlying motives, assuming everything that she did should be mistrusted, simply for having the audacity to exist.
And while it was clear that Proudmoore did not respect her, as Sylvanas' list of — albeit, somewhat selfishly motivated, but all together wholly justified — war crimes now was miles long, she was willing to treat her as someone who deserved to have their voice heard, at least for the time being.
"I know what you think of me now, and what you believe I deserve," Sylvanas began, walking the length of the room in front of the other woman, her gaze piercing and imploring; asking the woman to stay her judgment for a moment, and just listen. "But the things that I have done to cause the damnation of my soul are a byproduct of the fact that I already knew it was damned a long time ago, and that in the end, nothing I did mattered."
Proudmoore's brow creased, but for the time being she chose to say nothing in response.
"Considering their desire to join me on the battlefield lately, I'm sure you're aware of the existence of my val'kyr, and what they are able to do for me," Sylvanas continued, feeling the tethers to her soul tighten as her guardians watched their interaction from the shadows. "But do you know how I came to obtain them?"
Proudmoore momentarily pressed her tongue to the back of her incisors, a dark expression on her face. "I heard a rumor that they were imprisoned by Arthas," she responded, and Sylvanas could hear the slight waver in the other woman's voice when she mentioned his name out loud. "I'm sure you wasted no time doing the same once you were able. I cannot deny that they are a great tactical advantage, despite slavery being absolutely despicable, but, then again, the ends always justify the means for you, don't they?"
Despite herself, Sylvanas actually grew offended by that. "You believe I enslaved them?" she barked, stepping away from the woman as fury etched into the lines of her expression. Sylvanas held her hand up, signaling to her val'kyr not to intervene despite feeling their anger seep into her from the shadows, exacerbating her own. "After what I endured from the Lich King? After I was made to be a puppet for his wrath, watching helplessly from inside the creature I had become as he used me to murder my own people? I was an object to him— my body was kept hidden away like some sort of fucking trophy he obtained to do with as he pleased, and you think I would strip another of their autonomy in that regard? Do you know anything at all, mage, or do you just so love hearing the sound of your own holier-than-thou bullshit that you'll choose to believe anything that fits your narrative?"
Sylvanas' chest heaved, yet another byproduct of her habits when she was alive. She stared at the woman across from her, crimson eyes blazing. "I know slavery, human. I know what being stripped of choice feels like. I am not so quick to do that to another."
Proudmoore was rigid, her jaw tight as she held eye contact. The mage did at least look a little bit ashamed of herself for that assumption, and of course rightly horrified by the information that Arthas had kept the other woman's corpse, but as she seemed content on despising anything to do with Sylvanas based on principle, those emotions were shoved down as she held onto that defiant streak inside of her, wedging the gap between them even deeper. "And yet, you raise the dead against their will," Proudmoore responded evenly. "What is that, if not slavery?"
It felt as though the woman had reached down Sylvanas' throat and sunk her nails into her guts, twisting and pulling them halfway up her esophagus. It was an ugly emotion; one that managed to suffocate a woman who could no longer breathe as Sylvanas' eyes flashed, feeling herself stand taller in defense. "I raise those that are willing," the banshee responded dangerously. "For the most part, I—"
"For the most part," Proudmoore repeated, and Sylvanas felt her anger worsen as she realized a part of what she was feeling was shame. But that was unacceptable, because Sylvanas was no longer mortal, and therefore should not feel weighed down by those burdens any longer.
"It was war!" Sylvanas loudly reminded her, feeling as though that made many of her transgressions justifiable. Leaders do what they must in order to ensure victory; that was nothing new by any means, and condemning her for it seemed terribly unjust considering Sylvanas knew Proudmoore's people have done things of similar caliber. "The survival of my kind depends on the replenishment of the fallen; a sacrifice of a few for the good of the many. Regardless, they are not slaves; the Forsaken have their free will, or was that not apparent when I was shot in the head by Godfrey, or when your brother exercised his when he turned on me and fled to you? Believe me, Proudmoore, if I had them enslaved like you're so quick to believe, neither of those things would have ever happened."
At the mention of her brother, Proudmoore's expression twisted into rage, her eyes flashing white with power as she allowed her magic to hover near the surface again. Pure arcane seeped out of the woman much like the banshee's spectral form, and Sylvanas had to stop herself from instinctively gravitating toward her. It was a lot— Sylvanas had been around plenty of powerful mages before, yet had felt the effects of next to none of them since her death. If she felt their power at all, it was muted, faded— but that mana bomb had done something to Proudmoore, and an already powerful archmage became something far, far more dangerous.
"You dare mention Derek to me? You?" the younger woman seethed, her chest heaving as her body practically crackled with energy. Proudmoore knew better than to release her magic now, it seemed, but her instincts were still there. The woman laughed bitterly, cruelly. "I have to say, Banshee, for desiring an audience, you sure as hell don't know how to play to yours."
Sylvanas knew she was losing the other woman's interest in this interaction and as that was not her aim, tried to reel herself in long enough to offer something that resembled an apology. Even if, frankly, Sylvanas felt she had nothing to apologize for. If anything, Derek owed her an apology for being yet another goddamn person who betrayed her. Still, Proudmoore was a human, and as a race they tended to get rather dramatic until they were offered that kind of sentiment. "Raising your brother was merely a tactical maneuver. You are the enemy. It wasn't personal—"
"Don't."
Proudmoore's voice was dangerously low, the word almost vibrating through her chest as the magic in the air became stronger. It licked at the banshee's skin, crawling down her spine as it made her chest hollow and her nostrils flare. Sylvanas did not acknowledge the effect it had on her though and merely stared at Proudmoore, tall and strong-jawed. A part of her wondered if this was even worth it; surely eradicating the mage would be easier, but Sylvanas had never been one to take the easy route— especially should the end result prove to be personally advantageous. That was why Sylvanas finally took a full step backwards, allowing both Proudmoore and herself a moment, as she was aware that nothing good would come of this if both continued to be combative.
Because honestly, Sylvanas despised wasting her time.
[x]
It took a lot of self-control not to drive an icicle through Sylvanas' eye the second she mentioned Derek.
Jaina knew it wasn't personal; how could it be? Sylvanas did not know her. They had spoken briefly many years ago, after the events of the Wrath Gate, and that was about the extent of it. They knew of one another, of course; this conversation had clearly demonstrated that both women were well-aware of the history of the other. So yes, from a tactical standpoint, Jaina could understand what Sylvanas was trying to achieve by raising Derek and attempting to use him against her.
But that didn't mean it didn't piss her the fuck off, nor did it mean that she owed Sylvanas rationality. The bitch certainly had not earned it. It was one thing to raise a soldier right after they had fallen, and Jaina understood that many of the Forsaken feared a permanent death, but Derek had been long dead and it felt… violating, to rip him from his afterlife like that.
Still, as furious as she was over it, Jaina knew it was better to try to stay her temper. Attacking Sylvanas would get her nowhere except perhaps into a new torture chamber, and she would not be that foolish. So Jaina gave herself a moment to breathe, allowing the arcane storm inside of her to weaken and settle into little more than a mere raincloud. Truthfully, a part of Jaina wished they would just fight; the simplicity of it would be a welcome change from whatever this was. What little she had heard of Sylvanas' truth was already unnerving, as it had been far easier to demonize her. Jaina had known what Arthas had done to the Forsaken, but she hadn't known enough, it seemed, and now that she was beginning to, nothing of what she had learned sat well with her.
Jaina still blamed herself for quite a lot when it came to her former lover, her plaguing thoughts of 'if I had just done more', or 'perhaps if I had only tried harder' becoming a constant barrage of guilt whenever she allowed her mind to linger on the man, and hearing what Arthas had done to Sylvanas only made it worse. Still, Jaina would not allow it to show in her expression; she did not need the other woman to sense her guilt and use it against her. Jaina's expression remained stony, detached— at least until the other woman took another step, and continued with her story.
"I've died a handful of times," Sylvanas admitted, getting back to the point of their original conversation. "But only once has my soul moved on to the afterlife. After I threw myself from the top of Icecrown Citadel—"
As that was not a sentence that Jaina had been expecting, she nearly choked on her breath as she stumbled over her request for clarification. "After you— you what?"
Jaina's eyes widened, her jaw gently slacking as her chest compressed with instinctual sympathy for someone who must have seen no other way out of her misery. Sylvanas' expression remained unchanged despite the reaction she received, but Jaina could see unrest behind her piercing gaze as she talked about her suicide as casually as one would mention the weather. It was perhaps that which unnerved Jaina most of all, that Sylvanas did not consider her pain worth lingering on.
"Following the Lich King's defeat, I saw little point in continuing to exist, and so I sought to rectify the issue," she responded simply, and Jaina's stomach wrenched unpleasantly in her gut. "The saronite spikes below were the only thing able to obliterate my undead body—"
Jaina held up her hand to halt the other woman's explanation— the last thing she wished to do was picture it. "I understand what your aim was, thank you." Her voice was tight, her lungs compressing uncomfortably in her chest as she stared at Sylvanas like she was seeing her for the first time and frankly, Jaina did not like it. This was the woman who had set Teldrassil aflame, who had helped trap Jaina and her comrades in their current torturous misery, and she did not wish to feel sympathy for the woman Sylvanas used to be, as she could not bear the one that was before her now.
Sylvanas peered at her, her expression darkening as one of her ears twitched. She did not seem to enjoy being pitied, and since Jaina did not enjoy feeling sympathetic towards someone so morally reprehensible, neither women lingered on that subject for long.
"I am not so damaged that I believe I deserve a peaceful afterlife," Sylvanas admitted, although Jaina took note of the strain in her voice; this, this was the part that Sylvanas needed her to listen to, and so the mage stayed quiet and allowed her to speak her piece. "But when I fell to what I had hoped would become my permanent death, the last thing I expected was to be sent here. And I do not mean Torghast; I mean the empty part of the Maw— the place that hollows you out, shreds apart your soul, and leaves you wondering if you will ever feel anything other than fear and agony again as all you know, all you experience for the rest of your eternity is nothing but darkness and loneliness and pain. That place is for the most vile creatures— unredeemable souls who have committed the worst atrocities, and at the time, the majority of my crimes were committed while under the control of another! They weren't even my sins, and yet I believed I was being judged for them all the same, because despite its unreasonable cruelty, it was the only thing that made sense."
Sylvanas' tone grew heavier, more insistent, her voice stressing as she gestured angrily at the realm around her. "But as it turned out, this entire afterlife was nothing but a self-fulfilling prophecy that doomed me from the start! Because what was worse than believing I was condemned to the Maw due to another's actions, was finding out far, far too late that what actually condemned me were all the things I was going to do after the val'kyr I struck a deal with helped me to escape; things I did solely to prevent myself from ever returning here! Everything I was capable of, all the atrocities I would commit in order to save myself and others like me from being unfairly judged by the Arbiter was the entire reason I was fated to suffer! To add even more insult to that injury, I have since found out that while Hellscream and his ilk languish in atonement amongst the denizens of Revendreth, there were those of us for whom repentance was never even an option! Explain to me, mage— explain to me why that is something you should be fighting to restore? Does that sound like a fair system to you?"
Sylvanas' imploring gaze searched hers like she actually expected Jaina to answer, yet the younger woman couldn't do much else other than stare at her as she tried to process what she was being told.
No, of course it didn't sound fair, but Jaina had a hard time believing that was truly how the process worked as it seemed so… well, for one it challenged the notion of free will. If Sylvanas' afterlife was predetermined by the acts she would commit to prevent it, then she truly never had a choice in who and what she would become. Still, it seemed like such a cop out for all the horrible things that she had done that Jaina found it hard to look at things objectively.
Sylvanas seemed to understand and accept that she had done some unforgivable things, and was horribly slighted by the fact she wasn't offered the kind of redemption in Revendreth that others had been given. But then that begged the question— could the Banshee Queen be redeemed? Did she even want to be, or did Sylvanas just want to avoid the Maw at all costs? Even if Sylvanas' intentions were genuine, that still left the question of whether or not the woman even deserved to have that chance— now, after everything that she had done.
Jaina did not know how the afterlife worked; she had a vague understanding of the realms but even that knowledge was spotty at best, as it wasn't as though many returned from the realms of the dead, and those that did were not that eager to speak of their time there. Still, it was not because of her ignorance on the matter that she did not pass judgment on Sylvanas in that regard; it was the fact that she knew it was not her place to. Jaina could not look into her soul and see who Sylvanas truly was, but the desperation and anger in the other woman's voice made it sound as though the Arbiter, who should have been able to do just that, had looked inside of Sylvanas and read her entirely wrong.
Jaina didn't know what to believe. On one hand, this was a woman who was proven to be underhanded with her tactics, and this entire speech could be nothing more than a well-rehearsed play meant to manipulate Jaina into becoming a sympathetic ally. But on the other hand, if what Sylvanas was telling her was true, then Jaina could not help but see how easily something like that could have broken her. If Sylvanas had felt like there was only one path she was forced to walk… well Jaina knew from experience now that that was suffocating in its insanity.
Regardless, no matter how trapped or helpless Sylvanas might have felt when faced with something she feared was inevitable, that was not a reason for her to cut down everyone in her path on her way to rectify it. Jaina pressed her lips together into a thin line as she stared at the woman across from her for a long moment until she finally spoke.
"If you're right," she stressed, as she did not want Sylvanas to think she was a fool who took her at her word. "Then no, that does not sound like a fair system."
Jaina watched as some of the tension left Sylvanas' body, causing her gaze to momentarily linger on the bulge of the banshee's arm muscles before they relaxed into smooth, pale skin. Jaina blinked, pulling her line of sight upward to meet the other woman's eyes. The heat in the chamber was still blazing due to the never-ending fire left behind by the demon, and sometimes Jaina felt as though she were drifting. She exhaled a long breath through her nose, straightening her spine as she steeled herself for the fight she knew was coming.
The mage's gaze hardened. "But you went so fucking far beyond… anything—" Her voice shook, fingernails digging into her palm. "You are not a victim. Not anymore. Maybe once I could have tried to understand the things you have done; we have all done things we were not proud of due to war, or out of fear, or self-preservation, but you ripped a hole in the Tide's damned world. You slaughtered innocents when battles were already won. You—!"
As predicted, when Jaina ripped away her understanding just as soon as she had given it, Sylvanas hissed in fury, fangs bared. "Haven't you been listening? Nothing we do matters; nothing you do, nothing I do matters at all! Not until things change, not until I can tear down this entire system, not until—!"
"And what of the bodies you stepped over to get here?!" Jaina bellowed, getting in the other woman's face. Her eyes flashed white while Sylvanas' grew to a deeper, angrier shade of crimson, black tendrils beginning to lick at ashen skin as Sylvanas failed to reel in both herself and her temper. "You are not the center of creation, Banshee! Many have died from getting caught in your whirlwind, and yet because they are not but details within the bigger picture, you believe they don't matter? Tides, what a fucking God complex you must have…!"
"I am only trying to do what is right!" Sylvanas insisted, her banshee form continuing to seep from her skin as she struggled to collect herself. Truthfully, she looked unhinged— the desperate desire for someone to understand her, to see what it was that she saw, was causing Sylvanas to fall apart as her words only got louder, more frantic. "No one else saw this— no one else knew; not until they found themselves here and it was far too late for anything to be done! I've seen both sides of this world, mage; if not me, then who else would rectify this?! Call it a God complex if you wish, but do not stand there and pretend that should you have found out you were condemned for eternity by things beyond your control that you wouldn't do everything in your power to rectify it. I may not know you, Lord Admiral, but even I can see that you're not that compliant; you're not that weak—"
"You're right, I'm not," Jaina stressed, her eyes searching the other woman's as her nostrils flared and the color in her cheeks grew deeper. "And that is why I would never take the easy way out. Your desire for eternal justice didn't need to have a trail of bodies behind it, but you couldn't be bothered to find another way, could you? Don't you dare stand there and preach to me about doing what you believe is right. You may have, once, but it's become a reason for you not to care; for you to do whatever you want under the banner of the ends justifying the means!"
Sylvanas' eyes blackened as she gestured angrily, fangs bared and chest heaving. "You don't know what I've done or why, human!"
"What reason could you possibly have had for the slaughter you ordered in Teldrassil?! How did murdering innocents get you any closer to your goal of remaking the afterlife?" Jaina challenged, causing the other woman to hiss furiously as she finally stepped away from her, looking as though she was going in circles inside of her own head. Maybe that was it, in the end— Sylvanas was simply driving herself mad trying to rewrite her own fate. Jaina could practically hear the justifications being turned over in the banshee's mind: but, but, but… And yet it seemed Sylvanas did not know how to voice her reasoning for that, as perhaps she had either lost her justifications, her words, or her mind.
But the longer this interaction continued, the more Jaina was growing concerned that it may be the latter, and that made the Banshee Queen far, far more dangerous than they had originally suspected, and something Jaina wasn't entirely sure she was adept to handle on her own.
[x]
Sylvanas felt like she was losing her goddamn mind, and it was making her angry.
Proudmoore had this way of turning everything around so that it made her sound worse, when all Sylvanas had been trying to do was explain to her that everything she thought she knew about life after death was wrong— backwards, unjust, and in need of reform. Yes, she had done morally reprehensible things to get this far, and yes, she did believe that the ends justified the means because Sylvanas wasn't the type of person to sit and cry for every life lost along the way, if at the end of the day it could save both herself and so many others from suffering the same fate that she had.
She had thought Proudmoore to be a kindred spirit, as the woman had a history of doing what she believed was right regardless of the consequences— consequences that, if Sylvanas had heard correctly, had even managed to kill Jaina's own father. She had thought the mage understood that sometimes sacrifices had to be made to achieve greater ends, but perhaps Proudmoore had grown soft over the years. That was so incredibly disappointing that it almost ached— for a moment, Sylvanas had actually convinced herself that someone might understand what she was trying to do, but that only infuriated her more because it wasn't as though she needed someone to understand. What she needed was Proudmoore's power; the rest of the woman was irrelevant, including her opinion.
And yet the woman's opinion was causing Sylvanas to look back at her choices for explanations she didn't even know were there anymore. Teldrassil… did not turn out how she had imagined, but that did not mean that she regretted her choice. That did not mean that she didn't have a reason, and as Sylvanas looked at Proudmoore and tried to reel in both her temper and her banshee form so that the other woman did not see the cracks that were beginning to form in her façade, the mage's figure blurred as the fire that surrounded the base of the chamber reminded Sylvanas of what had happened that night.
"You can kill us… but you cannot kill hope."
Sylvanas could remember the belief of that wretched ideal bleeding from the fallen lieutenant in greater quantities than the blood that had seeped from the wounds on her back. Sylvanas had found herself nearly choking on the sentiment as the fury, the devastation, the soul-shredding pain of how goddamn wrong that woman really was began to consume her whole. It was sudden and it was violent, and for a moment, Sylvanas' world slid out of focus and she no longer saw Delaryn before her, but an image of a woman long dead as the screams of the past echoed in her mind.
Hope. Yes, Sylvanas had known hope, once. She had hoped to hold Arthas back and protect her people, only for one of her own to betray her. She had hoped for a clean death, only to be forcefully tethered to this miserable world in the servitude of her murderer. Sylvanas had hoped, when she had desperately reached for peace through oblivion, that she would be greeted with a fair afterlife in which to spend her eternity— but hope, it seemed, was not for the wicked, even if that wickedness was first born from the whim of another.
Truthfully, hope was nothing but pain— an endless cycle of masochism that even now, despite her desire to free herself from it, Sylvanas could not help but grasp onto as she hoped that should her plans with the Jailer come to fruition, and she finally met her ends, that there would no longer be any need for hope at all, for everything would be fair and transparent and finally fucking acceptable. She disgusted herself, truly— Sylvanas had known better then and she damn well knew better now, and yet it seemed the mortal desire to hold on to the tatters of dreams had never left her as she desperately tried to free herself from the chains of destiny that bound her to a path she no longer wished to walk.
Hope had ruined her; had gutted Sylvanas from the inside out as the harshness of reality had cut into her sternum and seeded itself within a heart others had claimed was long dead. Truth be told, Sylvanas wished it was. In the end, it would have made everything so much easier. But that was alright, because Sylvanas could remember what had happened now— she remembered knowing that she could make it easier for others by destroying that which would have decimated them, if only it was given the chance.
Sylvanas recalled looking down into the wide eyes of Delaryn Summermoon, watching the last few breaths linger on the elf's lips. Sylvanas briefly wondered in that moment if the woman knew yet that she was looking into a mirror; the eyes, the skin, the ears may have been different, but the determination and the bravery and the foolishness had been discomforting in its familiarity. But, perhaps, that was what Sylvanas— no, what Delaryn had needed. There had been a sense of frantic urgency that rose up within the Warchief after that thought, a chance to do right by another despite its inherent cruelty, but the world was damned cruel and the transparency of that bore the chance of hardening Delaryn and giving her strength when she would ultimately arise a bastardization of the woman who had helped her meet her untimely end.
It was something Sylvanas had wanted for herself and her own death, truthfully. If this was the fate that had been woven for her while she walked on Azeroth— Forsaken, doomed, a blight upon this world and everything in it, then she could accept that— but it did not have to come with the pain of hope tethered to the tapestry, and after what she had done… neither would Delaryn's. Neither would any who had witnessed the fall of Teldrassil.
Because Sylvanas would have set them free. She would have set them all free.
Sylvanas could remember her gaze flickering to the tree as the realization of what she must do swirled behind her crimson eyes, a sense of victory pulling at the edges of her lips. "…Can't I?"
The fear in Delaryn's eyes had deepened with those words, and a tear slid down the night elf's cheek.
Sylvanas had been gentle, almost tender when she cupped the woman's face with her palm, encouraging Delaryn to look upon the death of her true enemy. She had understood even then how she would be viewed for this crime, but Sylvanas had held little doubt that in the end it would be worth the pain she had caused. What did it matter, anyway, how she achieved her ends? As she had wasted breath trying to explain to Proudmoore, her fate was already written, and although Sylvanas knew she would fight against it with or without the mage's help, she was also aware that the likelihood of being crushed beneath the weight of destiny was staggering, if not inevitable. In the end, that was why Sylvanas reasoned that night that if she could not save herself, then at least she would be able to save others from walking the same path as her, and finding naught but pain, disappointment, and failure in a world that promised something better, yet fell so very far short.
Sylvanas could remember slowly rising to her feet, the hollowness in her chest more apparent than it had ever been as she vowed to kill the one thing that had tainted her dreams, her reality, and the last of her sanity.
"…Burn it."
The words echoed in the back of Sylvanas' mind as reality flooded back, leaving her with yet another woman who did not understand her aims. Delaryn, at least, had come around in the end— although only after she had been raised as one of her Dark Rangers. Perhaps death would be the thing that would open Proudmoore's eyes as well, though their being in the afterlife might cause unnecessary complications when it came to raising. It left Sylvanas with little choice other than outright convincing the mage to join her cause, which seemed to be growing more and more unlikely by the minute, as Proudmoore was just standing there, staring at her, as though she actually believed Sylvanas could put into words why she had chosen to burn that tree when she had already won.
And yet, Sylvanas still tried, despite knowing she could never truly verbalize how she felt, because she could never trust anyone enough for them to know the depths of her pain. The banshee exhaled another breath she did not need, her shadows finally returning from whence they came as her anger suddenly fell away to melancholy. "Hope… was their true enemy," she told her simply, unable to meet the mage's gaze as she chose instead to stare into the flames behind her. "I set them free."
A small scoff was exhaled from the younger woman, this look of utter horror, of disbelief etched into the lines of her expression. Proudmoore took a noticeable step backwards, as though space would keep her from being corrupted by whatever darkness had seeped into Sylvanas' soul. "…You've lost your mind."
Maybe she had. Sylvanas did not know anymore.
Nor did she have the effort for whatever this was any longer. The banshee took a step back as well, her face expressionless as she tried to ignore the heaviness that had made camp in the middle of her chest. It felt as though it were growing larger, and that if she did not get out of there that it would soon overtake her completely. "I can see this endeavor was pointless."
Proudmoore's jaw tightened. "Well-spotted."
It was unfortunate, really— the mage could have been a great asset, yet instead, like so many others, she allowed her morality to stand in the way of an important goal. Perhaps that was just what mortality did to people though— Sylvanas could often remember her own moral code screwing her in the end when she was alive, and yet she continued to hold on to it until the bitter end despite it apparently not doing a thing for her immortal soul.
Because look at what had happened… and look at what it had wrought.
TBC…