The road decended lazily from the Thalassian Pass. After several hours, the elegant and ancient edifice of the Outer Elfgate loomed before her. Built of white stone with crimson and gold trim, it stood astride the pass as an imposing guardian. Originally, it had been empowered with the greatest of Elven magics, meant to keep Quel'Thalas safe from any invaders. It was more resolute than any fortress's stone wall, but long before Necri's time, the magics had finally failed, and the Trolls had stormed through to claim their ancestral homeland.
Technically, she knew, the Trolls were in the right: this was their land. The High Elves, fleeing from the persecution of their own people, had settled here later, carving Quel'Thalas away from the Amani. Much in the same way as the humans had created their Empire of Arathor.
Somehow, Necri still lacked sympathy for the Trolls.
Despite the intervening centuries, the hundred-foot-tall gate still stood as a proud announcement of Elven strength. She rode through, noting the same cracks and stains that she, as a wide-eyed and impressionable youth, had seen thousands of years before...
She was only one of a hundred humans, all of them clustered into a handful of wagons; a sea of nervous heads that were seeing Elven lands for the first time. At the head of the line rode Magister Quithas Dawnspell and two of his apprentices. Their graceful, birdlike mounts made little sound as they strutted carefully down the silver-cobbled road. Elven guards flanked the procession, their longspears and swords held at the ready.
The young girl's heart beat faster. She had exchanged a nervous glance and a shy smile with one of the apprentices as they crossed the pass. Convinced he had singled her out, she felt flushed and excited...
Necri shook her head, bemused at the follies of youth. That had been before the start of her magical training - when she had been completely ignorant of the power that the Darkness held.
...A time when she had still believed in love.
Suddenly, she pulled hard on the Felsteed's reins. She could hardly believe her eyes.
On the other side of the Elfgate… the forest had -changed-.
No longer did the Eversong glow with its beautiful golden hue, sparkling with the light of uncountable miniature stars hidden in each leaf and stem. The ravages of a devastating fire were obvious; the charred corpses of trees lurked half-hidden under the forest floor, while those still-living had grown around their ashen scars. Rocks blackened and cracked by heat stuck out like rotten teeth from new growths of blue-tinged moss and grass. Gloomy, regretful shadows suffused the area. While not diseased and poisoned like the lands she had left, the forest had still suffered greatly.
Anger gripped Necri's unbeating heart. Had -nothing- survived unscathed from her former life? Had death, corruption, and destruction consumed -everything-?
The irony, given her decayed condition, was not lost on her.
She drove her Felsteel north, meaning to reach Silvermoon as quickly as possible, hoping that the road to Zul'Aman was burned away, or overgrown and unrecognizable, that it wouldn't trigger her…
There.
It was five years to the day since she had first traveled the road to Quel'Thalas. Five years of training in the arcane arts, of being lauded as one of the saviors of Arathor.
And two years since she had realized what the Elves were -not- teaching them. Two years since she had stepped forward to wrest power from the darkness that surrounded them all.
Two years since she had had Love burned out of her soul forever.
The human host, weary from its passage over the mountains, met the High Elven army with a blast of horns. The road to Zul'Aman was lost under uncountable feet and hooves. The banners of Strom and Quel'Thalas flew noisily in the crisp breeze. The humans had been harassed by Troll forces since leaving the pass; this had done little but inflame the soldiers and keep them alert. Even the occasional bombing run by bat-riders did not slow the pace of advance; the mages and rangers were ready with fireballs and arrows
As a single unit, the armies marched east. The nobility of their purpose was reflected in every shout and every rhythmic step of the soldiers' booted feet.
Finally, the ancient Troll city of Zul'Aman came into view.
A majestic staircase of wood and stone, flanked by blazing braziers, swept two hundred feet up a slope to meet a grand, fortified entrance built into a narrow pass between two steep hills. The edifice was intricately carved with fierce images of the Amani's totem animals; snakes and eagles loomed over bears and lynxes.
In front of the great doorway, on a wide platform, waited the Troll army. Drumming and chanting echoed so loudly that the very earth quaked. Sacrificial fires sent plumes of oily smoke to darken the sky.
Though Necri had only the most basic grasp of military strategy, she could see that the combined might of the humans and Elves vastly outnumbered the Trolls. Cheers and shouts of challenge sprang from human and Elven throats.
Until the trap was sprung.
From the flanks of the combined army, howling masses of tusked warriors emerged from hidden holes and trap doors. Individual unit commanders moved to defend against this sudden threat, but the numbers were no longer in their favour. Elven rangers hammered the advancing Trolls with arrows, but it seemed to make no difference at all to their onrushing charge.
The berserkers on the platform, inspired by their sacrifices and drums, flooded down the steps in a wave of green-skinned muscle and weaponry, and the battle was truly joined.
Human mages, eager to test their magic, lit up the smoky air with their spells, countering the Troll shamans with blasts of fire and ice. When this attracted enemy attention, they would teleport a short distance away, leaving illusory images of themselves to confuse and distract the attackers.
Necri found it difficult to restrain herself. She knew so much -more- than her comrades. Great power itched at her fingers and seethed within her heart. She longed to tap into the demonic energies she had learned to control, but once she did that, there would be no going back. So, with gritted teeth, she restricted herself to the spells the Elves had taught her.
Fireball after fireball immolated her enemies. Surrounded by smoke and fire, her vision and focus narrowed until she only saw the enemies near her. She ceased to bother blinking away from attackers. Instead, she blasted them with ice to slow their movement, then followed with searing flames and hurled lances of ice.
The hot smoke stung her eyes...
...which snapped her, disoriented, back to the present, where the smoke still wreathed around her. She was momentarily alarmed, until she realized that her hands glowed with spell-fire, and her mana was significantly drained. The ground around her was scorched anew. Her Felsteed, obviously caught in the blasts, was nothing more than a scattered mess of charred bones. Frustration and fear welled up in her.
She was vulnerable, it seemed. Memory could take away her conscious mind, leaving her at the mercy of the past. This by itself was cause for significant concern, but there was something else that bothered her as well.
With the sole exception of the Rain of Fire (itself a demonic spell), she hadn't been able to cast these spells of ice or flame since the battle at Zul'Aman. The elemental incantations had been forgotten once she had fully accepted the demonic magics.
And she remembered clearly what had caused the transition.
She barely registered that the screams and the stench had stopped bothering her. Her eyes were no longer impeded by the lack of light.
When she felt her mana beginning to drain, she allowed herself to draw - ever so slightly - from the pool of demonic energy within her. Her flames burned just that much brighter, her ice just that much colder.
The enemy pressed in all around.
In the corners of her vision, she watched the other human mages. She saw their excitement turn to fear as the battlefield grew dark with smoke and blood. Occasionally, their illusory distraction would fail, and a looming Troll warrior would pounce viciously. People she had known - trained with, lived with, laughed with - were torn apart in seconds.
The carnage of those moments would live in Necri's mind for the rest of her life. Somehow, she managed to compartmentalize the trauma, to push it away to be dealt with later. Others were less lucky.
These were not trained and experienced soldiers. They had been normal people: farmers, cobblers, scribes, and the like. Some were little more than children. All of them chosen for possessing the beautiful spark of magic.
Some of them fled. Others collapsed, sobbing and vomiting, on the blood-soaked ground.
The Trolls cared not. The fleeing were taken in the back by spears and axes, and the catatonic were slaughtered where they lay.
Her company was cut off from the rest of the army. The enemy, still too numerous to count, pressed in on all sides.
No!
With effort, she forced herself back to the present. The cacophony of battle faded away, replaced by silent, burnt stumps and blue moss. She glared down the eastern road that could lead her, miles away, to Zul'Aman, struggling to keep those echoes where they belonged - in the distant past.
She did not want to relive -again- what happened next. Once was too much already. Deliberately, she turned north and began walking, using her scythe as a walking-stick.
If Ropart was to be believed, Zul'Aman was still intact, even if its empire had crumbled around it. But the Amani never gave up. If even a single Amani still lived, she knew that it would still be waiting, biding its time to attack. That was the Troll way.
She passed ruined spires; once-beautiful outposts and chambers of magical study now overgrown with strange, swirl-headed ferns. But not all was abandoned - there were signs of active maintenance, where the weeds and ferns had been cleared away. As she traveled, she found areas where new flowers had been planted. Around these places, the devastation from the fire seemed a little less pervasive; the leaves glinting with slight edgings of the forest's lost gold.
After several hours of walking, the road began to rise up a long, shallow hill. In the distance, Necri could make out several figures walking toward her. She slowed her pace and mentally reached out to Galarax to ensure the connection to her demon was close at hand.
The figures soon resolved into a group of five Elven rangers, all female, dressed in green-and-purple armour. Each of them carried a variety of weapons.
"Bal'a dash, malanore!" the middle ranger called out as Necri continued her approach. Though she had to work through the strange accent, Necri was relieved to recognize the words as 'greetings, traveler'. The language was Thalassian, the language of the High Elves.
With her decayed throat, Necri couldn't shout back, so she gave a simple salute and stood still, leaning against her scythe.
The Elves she had known two millennia ago had been overly polite and verbose in their speech. Their language could make even the most base of insults sound beautiful. Given the trials they had experienced in recent years, it was quite possible their culture had shifted, but there was no way for her to know. Necri resolved to reign in her normally brusque and rude mannerisms.
Once the rangers were close, she bowed to them and whispered as politely as she could. "Greetings, rangers. Please accept my apologies for the roughness of my speech."
For several moments, they just stared at her. Had she somehow still managed to offend…?
"I am Ranger-Captain Jaela. You are Forsaken, are you not? Yet you speak Thalassian. Few humans, alive or dead, care to learn our tongue." The middle one, who had spoken, stepped forward. Her manner was of surprised curiosity.
"Yes," Necri replied with relief. "I am of the Forsaken. I have come from Undercity, and I am known as Necri."
"Greetings, Necri. You are welcome here. Now that the Scourge threat to our lands has been largely eliminated, we receive few Forsaken visitors. But well do we remember the assistance provided by Undercity when we were first working to reclaim Eversong."
It was a warmer invitation than Necri had expected. "That is greatly appreciated, Ranger-Captain. My destination is Silvermoon City. Is there anything I should be aware of on the route?"
"The road is mostly clear. There are regular patrols, of which we are one. If you are amenable, we could escort you most of the way to the city."
Necri was conflicted. She had no wish for company, but she knew she was being given a distinct honour. In the end, she erred on the side of avoiding offense. "It would be an honour, Ranger-Captain." She bowed deeply.
The five rangers fell into formation, with two ahead and two behind. Jaela walked beside her and made light conversation, which greatly helped Necri adjust her pronunciation.
Necri was not particularly empathetic or social. It was a weakness of hers, she knew. She often found peoples' motivations difficult to discern; their body language difficult to read. But when Jaela asked a particular question in a voice just slightly too casual, and the other four rangers tensed silently, Necri knew she had sailed into dangerous waters.
Or perhaps she had always -been- in dangerous waters, and was only now realizing it.
"So what brings you all the way to Silvermoon? The road through the Plaguelands is hardly safe, even now."
Necri considered her response for as long as she dared. "It is something of a mystery to me. I come for answers regarding certain spells that were cast upon my person … some time ago."
"And who do you plan to seek these answers from?"
Necri kept her voice as even as she could, hoping to avoid revealing too much information. "If there is a guild or similar organization for mages, I thought to start there." In truth, she had no intention of making her investigation so public.
It didn't work.
"There is something you are not telling us." The accusation was delivered with the same offhanded tone.
"My apologies for being vague, Ranger-Captain, but this is -my- business." Necri was beginning to lose patience with this false casualness.
"Yet it is also far more than that. You see, Magister Dawnspell has been murdered, and we were told to expect you."