Haa'aji took a running jump and jerked himself up into the higher branches of a rather scraggly looking tree. He pulled his emaciated body to the trunk of the tree and willed himself not to be seen.
The ghouls below hadn't seen him yet and, uninjured as he was, they weren't driven to find him with their bloodlust. The rotting corpses meandered along, one walking into the base of the tree he was hiding in for a moment before managing to redirect itself around.
Haa'aji held his breath until he thought he would pass out and then he slowly let it out as softly as possible.
He was getting to be pretty damn good at sneaking around, though somehow his roguish victory seemed hollow. What was the point? It wasn't like he'd ever be part of the order.
More often than not, Haa'aji found himself cursing his own stupidity. No, he didn't think the elves should have died. But was that really worth this? He could barely find anything safe enough to eat, and even when he did, he had to settle for it raw. Fires and smoke drew the undead like magic did elves. He longed to be back with his brother and his cookie cutter life, but he knew there was no point. He'd tried to go back twice, to beg for mercy, and they had merely turned him away.
They wouldn't even kill him.
No, if he was going to die, it would be a pitiful, wretched death.
Haa'aji wasn't sure why he still fought so hard to keep going. He supposed he just wasn't ready to die yet. What was he still living for? It seemed like it would be so much easier to just use the rusted dagger he'd found in one of the decimated elven settlements and end his own life. Hell, even if those despicable necromancers raised him, being a ghoul didn't look like it'd be so bad. They didn't seem to know that they were monsters.
He inspected the surrounding woods and slowly slipped back to the ground. Being a ghoul would probably beat starving to death, too.
With a quiet sigh, Haa'aji shook off his thoughts of suicide. He might not be an Amani anymore, but he was still a proud fighter. He wouldn't die by any other means than battle. So he was a bit hungry...he'd figure something out.
He hunched toward the ground and began to walk carefully through the forest, careful not to step on anything that might make enough noise to alert the monsters around him of his presence.
~"~
"Gracie—"
"That's not my name," the tauren death knight hissed at Shadow.
He stood awkwardly in front of her, his hulking form blocking her exit. It was the first he'd seen of her since their deaths, and he wasn't sure why he'd gone over to her. He couldn't quite remember her, in all honesty, though when he'd looked at her, he'd known that they'd had some sort of connection in life. Whatever it was eluded his attempts to recall.
Still, something had driven him to approach her. A longing for a kindred spirit, perhaps? Surely there was no other creature alive who could relate to him better. Sometimes he could remember having loved life and all the little things that went into it. The balance of it all.
She had been like him, hadn't she? They'd both dealt with that delicate balance.
Whatever his reason, he'd moved to stop her when he'd seen her briskly walking past in Acherus. A half formed apology for her death festered on the tip of his tongue, though he swallowed it and shrugged. "What do you go by now?"
"Leafless."
"Leafless, then," Shadow murmured, shrugging his giant shoulders as though the names were meaningless. The awkwardness returned tenfold. What was he supposed to say now? That it was good to see her? It really wasn't. She was just as much an abomination as he was.
Leafless crossed her arms and gave the tauren in front of her a frigid glare. "If you want a friend from life, you're wasting your breath."
Even as he tried to think of something to say, she shoved him. While her actions had little effect, he understood the sentiment and backed out of her way, letting her storm off into another part of Acherus.
As he watched her disappear around a corner, Shadow frowned, a low whistle interrupting his thoughts. He turned to glance over his shoulder and saw Bloodsworn standing behind him, arms crossed.
When the human death knight realized he'd caught Shadow's attention, he grinned and shrugged. "Women, right?"
Shadow didn't like the thought that he might be able to relate to the sadistic prick, but he merely shrugged as well. "It would be better if they just stayed dead."
Bloodsworn cackled, though he shook his head. "But they're so much fun to play with." He walked up and stopped in front of Shadow. "By the way, I wanted to thank you."
"For...?" Shadow wanted to edge away from him, but he held his ground.
"The other week, in the square. There really isn't much point in a living healer, is there? A non-cult one, anyway."
Shadow merely shrugged.
Bloodsworn paused as he watched two other knights stride by, laughing about how one of the towns they'd been to recently had attempted to bribe them to leave them be. He waited until they were out of earshot before grinning. "A living weapon is more interesting, anyway."
Shadow frowned. "You have a real hard on for the living, don't you?" When Bloodsworn laughed, Shadow tried to ignore the urge to cringe at the malice in the man's tones. "What, did you decide it'd be more fun for your pet to attack than to heal?"
"She cares so much for life, I thought it would be better if she took it herself."
Shadow stared at him. "You're having a living creature kill for you?"
Bloodsworn shook his head. "Not yet. She's got a pretty damned strong will. Even tried to kill herself a couple times now. I fixed that, though. I'm getting closer to breaking her, and when I do, it's going to be glorious." Despite his smile, his words sounded hollow.
"You don't sound so sure," Shadow murmured, even though he didn't really want to continue their conversation.
Bloodsworn sighed. "She's...I guess I hit her too hard. She can't remember anything. Taunting her with the names she used to adamantly swear would be coming for her doesn't even elicit a response. It's...frustrating. But I'm sure it'll come back to her. Then it'll be sweeter to bend her will to mine."
"Shadow!"
Tinker's high pitched voice cut through the air and Shadow snapped his attention toward the little gnome, her ghoul mount shambling up toward them. Shadow had never been so happy to see her coming his way as he was then. While she smiled and nodded to her tauren companion, she eyed Bloodsworn with open disdain.
The human gave her a condescending smile and lightly hit Shadow on the arm before walking off. "Thanks again for the inspiration."
~"~
Before Adrias and the others even encountered the undead, they noticed a dulling in the colors of Eversong. The eternal golden and reds of the foliage overhead gave way to dull browns then to grays then to skeletal empty branches all together. The grass tapered off as though the undead had somehow poisoned the very earth itself, leaving the twisted dirt to strangle the life that it had spent so many millennia nurturing.
While the four of them were no druids, and honestly had only ever heard of such people in the oldest of stories, they could tell that the land was suffering. Prynn stepped up to a tree, running her fingers over the coarse, brittle bark. She hissed a soft curse as a splinter broke off in her finger, and she jerked her hand away.
Wren seemed to be taking this the worst. Adrias supposed that, as a Farstrider, he was used to nature, used to how it should have been. Wren ignored his brother's offhanded question about whether the rune stones were still intact and leapt into the lower branches of one of the desolate trees. He pulled himself higher and higher until he felt the wood threaten to give out beneath his weight, not because the branch was too thin, but because it was rotten.
At least, Adrias assumed so, as he'd seen his brother scale higher into trees before. That, and a few rotten splinters fell back to the earth long before Wren came down. Adrias and the others watched the Farstrider take in their surroundings—nearly falling once as he leaned forward a little, trying to see something over the tree tops.
Even down below, as the wind hit them, it filled them with a chill. It lingered in Adrias' bones, even as his borther dropped back to the ground and rejoined the rest of them.
Adrias blinked when Wren swung up onto his hawkstrider and began a swift pace back the way they'd come. "Where do you think you're going?"
"You said we were sent to scout what's going on. To gauge the undead menace," Wren turned to face the others, his face a poor mask for the unease within him. "This...whatever this is, is on a larger scale than I think anyone realized. We have to go back and report what's happening."
"But Amaeria—"
Wren's attention snapped toward Gryst'lyn, and he stared at the warrior for a long, still moment. Slowly, his gaze swept over Adrias and then Prynn. "You said this was a scouting mission."
Prynn took a tentative step forward as Gryst'lyn and Adrias attempted to salvage the lie. "Please...we need someone who can navigate these woods."
Wren clenched his fists around his reins as he turned his mount just enough to stare back at the others, and Adrias thought he could hear the Farstrider grinding his teeth. So then he hadn't realized they were lying, as Adrias had thought. Likely, that had been thanks to Prynn, considering how Wren knew damned well and Adrias and Gryst'lyn would lie to him without a second thought.
Thanks to their little Light lover, he'd gone against his better judgment.
As much as he looked like he wanted to beat every one of them for wasting his time, Wren managed to restrain himself. Adrias idly glanced toward Prynn and wondered if it was his chivalrous code or some nonsense, that he wouldn't succumb to violence around those who didn't really deserve it.
Wren took in a few slow, even breaths before he looked back at Prynn, ignoring the other two. "I will lead you back to Silvermoon, but I will not take you further."
For the last week, Adrias had been expecting that declaration. They were running low on food. Even if they knew Amaeria was a mere week away, they wouldn't be able to get her and then make it back on the provisions they had now.
Prynn glanced toward Gryst'lyn as he set his jaw, a dark look overtaking his features, and then back at Wren, walking up to him as though she feared he might lash out. "Please. Amae... she was everything to me. My family, my friend. I would do anything for her. Isn't there someone you love more than anything else in this world? That you would be willing to sacrifice everything for, just to know they were safe...and happy?"
Adrias felt a chill run down his spine as he watched his brother's face. While the Farstrider said nothing, they could easily read his expression.
No.
Wren sat straighter as he looked down at the little priestess in front of him. "I'll take you back to Silvermoon. If your friend loved you half as much as you love her, she wouldn't have wanted you killing yourself on a fool's errand."
As he spoke, his words sounded hollow, as though he were reciting something someone had told him instead of speaking from experience. Adrias frowned as he realized that Wren probably didn't know much about love. Their family had never been thrilled to have someone who couldn't use even the simplest of spells to share their last name. To think that they had made the man who could now stare, unmoved, into the eyes of someone so desperately lost to heartbreak.
Even Adrias couldn't do that.
Prynn's ears quivered as she grabbed Wren's hand as though she intended to tug him after her, further into the dead woods. He stood his ground and watched her with a look of apathy as she began to plead with him.
While Adrias wanted to prod his brother, ask him if it was really that much further to the Farstrider outpost where Amaeria had disappeared, he knew that offering his own plea would all but kill any hope their expedition had. Perhaps that was what he needed to do. He could save Gryst'lyn with a plea, not to his hopeless friend, but to their guide. It would likely just take the inhale of breath to ask for help to turn Wren off to this expedition forever. One breath.
Instead, Adrias stood silent.
Gryst'lyn dropped his bags and rummaged through them before jerking his map out and striding over to Wren. He held the map and a pen out to him. "If you can just show me the path, I won't ask you to stay."
~"~
Thalach stared into a warped, cracked mirror as he reached up to feel his face. His tusks were crooked, one eye opened slightly wider than the other. A wicked head wound had taken off a good portion of his scalp, too.
But all of that barely registered to him. Instead, he couldn't tear his gaze away from his face. Half of it was barely hanging onto his skull, the skin slack no matter how he twisted his lips—snarl, smile, frown—and the signs of decay were rampant across his flesh making his once deep green skin look a sickly, almost blueish shade.
He could vaguely remember having been proud of his visage, though he couldn't understand or remember why it would have mattered. Appearances didn't matter to the Lich King.
Voices echoed in his head, too, other than his master's. He could hear pleas to turn back, not to be foolish, not to lead them to their deaths. He could remember proud soldiers, their shoulders hunched, their weapons too much of a burden as they begged. Home was far away, and this wasn't their fight.
He could remember them being cut down, could remember one rogue's expression as he'd been run through, the look he'd given Thalach.
The pain in his limbs was constant, but that memory, that look stirred a different kind of pain. Thalach couldn't explain it, but it was there, aching through him, telling him that whatever had happened had been his fault.
His master relished in deaths that were his fault. Those staved off the eternal aches in his bones, the pin needles in his blood veins, the fog that clouded his mind.
Even so, the memories of those warriors falling in battle didn't ease his agony, like most kills did.
It just left him hollow.
Turning away from the mirror, Thalach gripped his blade and moved out of the house he'd just finished clearing.
There were other memories that jumbled up his mind. Sometimes, they would burst to life so clearly that the swing of his blade would falter. He could see an orcess, shoulders squared back and proud, walking as though her growing belly didn't hurt her feet, holding the hands of two boys. They always looked so proud as they stared at him.
He was a great warrior.
He had been their great warrior.
Names tried to work their way into his mind as he thought of them, though his master's voice would echo into his head, almost desperate as he commanded Thalach to kill.
There was no room in a weapon for memories, for feelings.
And besides, pride had brought him here. Their pride, his own. He was a tool of the Scourge because he'd allowed pride to rule him. Those warriors had died under his charge because he'd been too stubborn and full of himself to do the right thing. To turn back.
He shuddered as a sense of horror began to overwhelm him. He was a monster. An abomination. If he had any sense of selfworth left in this rotting corpse, he would turn that damnable blade on himself.
You are mine.
The words richoted through him, staying his hand even as he started to draw his blade up to his neck. His life was not his to take.
That painful fog swept through him, burying the images of that orcess, of those children, of those warriors. All that was left was a dim haze and the knowledge that he was needed elsewhere.
His master wanted them moving north, and that was where they would go.
Perhaps he could leave the past behind in the trail of corpses already in his wake.
