"Sylvanas Windrunner and a band of Undead have broken free from the Scourge and moved into whatever's left of the Capital of Lordaeron to form a new society."

What?

Sylvanas Windrunner and a band of Undead have broken free from the Scourge and moved into whatever's left of the Capital of Lordaeron to form a new society.

Broken free from the Scourge?

I stared at the tauren standing there, wondering how he had gotten this kind of news. Was it possible? Sylvanas, free from the Scourge? Was she back?

"When?" asked Hamu.

"Apparently, the Lich King's power drastically decreased a few weeks ago, which is when it's rumored that the banshee recovered her body. She tried to kill the death knight who killed her."

"Arthas?" I asked in a voice that wasn't my own. "She tried to kill Arthas?"

"Yes, that's the one."

Yes, that's the one.

Sylvanas Windrunner and a band of Undead have broken free from the Scourge and moved into whatever's left of the Capital of Lordaeron to form a new society.

Sylvanas was back.

"From what we heard, Arthas and the Scourge have gone to Northrend, except for a few garrisons they left in Lordaeron and the elf lands."

"How accurate are these reports?" That voice… whose voice was that?

"Very. We heard this from various people, including a mage that survived the destruction of Dalaran."

"And found himself on Kalimdor?" asked Taisha.

"They wanted the news to spread fast."

"Who was the mage?" I wondered.

"His name, I believe, is Rhonin."

Rhonin!

Sylvanas's brother-in-law. I'd heard of him marrying Vereesa , but I hadn't dreamt that he would have kept track of what was happening with Sylvanas. My head was spinning. Sylvanas… free from the Scourge… had tried to kill Arthas… new society…

"I must go to Lordaeron." Now my voice sounded more normal. I looked at my tauren family and found them looking at me sadly, "I have to. I can't stay here knowing that… If she's alive, if she's all right, I have to talk to her. I have to tell her that I didn't leave her there to die alone…"

"We know you do, child," said Atalo. "Honestly, I thought you would have left us long ago, but I thank the spirits you stayed with us for as long as you did."

"I will help you pack," said Taisha, leading me to my room.

I hadn't accumulated many things during my time in Thunder Bluff. I only had eight dresses, all black in color, and two pairs of boots, also black. All of my accessories were black as well, whether they were tauren prayer beads, headbands, and even bracelets and earrings. I'd refused to wear anything other than black, though the Sunwell knew that my tauren mother had made me colorful dresses, which she'd afterwards dyed black so that I'd actually put them on.

"I'm sorry," I told her as I rolled up the dresses into a bag for my journey across the ocean. "I know I haven't been easy to live with over the last few months."

"You have been a pleasure to have around, my daughter," she said. "You made us very happy when you decided to be a part of your family. Your grief was very much a part of you, and we respect it. To be honest, I do not know how I would have fared in your position."

"I will come back, I promise."

"Of course you will. But even if you don't, know that we will always love you and be there for you if you need us."

I cried then, hugging her. She, Atalo, and Hamu had been so good to me that the thought of leaving them was painful. But it would be worse to stay knowing that Sylvanas was somewhere out there, possibly traumatized by what had happened to her. I couldn't leave her alone. "I love you." I said.

"I love you too, my dear." She helped me close my bag, then brought me to the kitchen, where Atalo had readied a simple meal of bread and cream.

"You are not going to leave on an empty stomach. Hamu will take you to the coast, near the new city of Orgrimmar, but I'm not sure what you will do afterwards."

"I'll find a way. If I have to go through Quel'Thalas so be it."

We sat down and ate, feeling rather down. I didn't like the idea of leaving my tauren family. I'd been grieving the whole time I had been with them, yes, but I'd had some good times in Thunder Bluff and on the Mulgore plains. I'd learned how to cook, sew, and had improved my hunting skills so much that I went hunting regularly with the tauren males, sometimes shooting down more animals than they did.

I'll come back, I thought. I wouldn't just leave them like that.

An hour later, Hamu and I were on our way. I rode Prince, who seemed to know that we were going home, and was thoroughly excited about it. Hamu wasn't the only one accompanying me. There were no less than twenty of us who would be riding to Orgrimmar, bringing liquor, meat, and leathers to the orcs, who would in turn give some prized ale for the tauren to bring back to Thunder Bluff.

We reached the Orgrimmar gates to find the city much bigger than it had been on our previous visit two months earlier. It seemed to have doubled in size, and I was astounded by the changes Thrall had made to it.

"It's amazing. I never thought that orcs would settle down and build anything like this."

"We tauren never thought we would settle down either," said Hamu. He had been quiet throughout our journey, and I knew he was upset about my leaving. "You should come back to Thunder Bluff with us, Faith. We can give you a good life."

"Brother…" I whispered. "You have to understand why I'm doing this. I cannot stay here if Sylvanas is somewhere out there on her own."

"But she's not on her own. The messenger clearly stated that she was with a band of other undead who had broken free. She may not even remember you."

That thought had crossed my mind, but I shook my head, "Hamu, I pledged my life to her when she saved me from the Scourge. I swore to myself that I would never leave her, and I intend to go see her now and at least talk to her. But I do promise that I will come back."

Hamu was still mad at me when I left on the first ship to the Eastern Kingdoms. I rode with orcs, trolls and tauren who were going there on Thrall's orders to find a foothold there for the Horde. It was awkward for me because I was the only female on board, a fact that the ship's captain wasn't too keen on, but he had at least consented to take me as far as the ship would go.

We had horrible weather for the crossing. Not one day went by without wind and pouring rain, and all of us were miserable until we finally reached the coastline of the eastern continent. The journey had taken us nearly a week longer than anticipated, and we were fast running out of food because the fishing hadn't been profitable with the storms being as bad as they had been.

"What is that place?" asked a troll, pointing up to what appeared to be a heavily fortified area on a cliff.

I recognized the flag flying above the fortress immediately, and knew we weren't in a safe place. "That's Gilneas. King Genn Greymane refused entry to the Alliance as the plague ravaged Lordaeron. We won't find any welcome here, so we'd better get a move on."

"Where is this capital you want to reach?"

"In Lordaeron, more to the north. But I don't know what we'll find there."

So we kept going for another few days. We were able to fish now, and shot down a few coastal birds to eat as well, so we did better than we had on the open ocean, but we were still weary.

"Do you think that maybe we should go to your home?" asked one of the orcs. "Maybe that would be easier."

"I'm not certain that they would agree to that. My people haven't forgotten the Second War, I'm afraid. But we can try them if we don't find anything here."

We finally reached The continent I'd known as Lordaeron, but that had been renamed Tirisfal Glades, accosting from the north. I saw banners on the coast, and what appeared to be a dock that was being rebuilt. The smell of death and decay hit us the moment we got close, and horrible memories assailed me, threatening to send me back into a sea of despair.

Undead people were on the docks, all of them wearing mail armor and wielding swords and lances. There were flags there, dark blue or purple in appearance, with a peculiar design on them: it looked like a broken white mask with a golden eye that bled purple blood, three arrows were driven through it, one of which had no point. The whole thing seemed to be set on an eagle sigil, and I couldn't help but notice how the mask actually had a striking resemblance to Sylvanas's face.

"They're not Scourge, are they?" asked a tauren.

"No," I replied. "But stay on your guard."

The undead had most definitely seen us. They waved us into port, some of them clearly wondering what we were doing there.

"We are not the Scourge," said one of them. "And we bid you welcome to Tirisfal Glades."

I shuddered at the sound of his voice, which was the hoarse whisper of dark cellar door.

"Thank you," I replied. "If you are not the Scourge, then I will consider you friends. My name is Faith Everstone."

The undead who had spoken took a step back, "Blackfire," he whispered.

"Excuse me?"

"You're Blackfire. You incinerate undead with a black fire."

Ordinarily, I would have been highly amused about the fact that former members of the Scourge referred to me by that kind of a name, although it was fitting. I would have also been amused by the fear in the undead's eyes, but I was beyond feeling amused by anything. "I incinerate the Scourge, yes. But I thought you said you weren't the Scourge?"

"We are not," said someone else, a female, by the look of her. "Most of us were before the Lich King lost his hold on us. We are the Forsaken now, so named by the Dark Lady, our banshee queen, Sylvanas Windrunner."

I looked at the skeletal beings in front of me. The idea of Sylvanas being a queen was one that should have made me laugh, but instead seemed formidable. And yet I knew that had she been Queen of Quel'Thalas, I would have followed her without question. "Is she here?" I asked.

"She's in Undercity," said the first Forsaken who had spoken. "The catacombs built underneath the ruins of Lordaeron. I know that she will want to see you now that you've arrived. We've sent envoys to the Horde in order to join them."

I heard murmuring behind me but paid it no mind. "We would be happy to help," I said, knowing that this was a very good way for Thrall to have bases here.

"Will you come down then? I promise that we will not hurt you."

I nodded, "Come on, everyone, I think it's okay."

My voyage companions didn't seem at all inclined to agree with me, but they realized that they had no choice in the matter. We stepped down from the ship, leaving a couple of people there to man it while the rest of us made our way to Lordaeron.

"We don't want you to be afraid of us," said the woman who had spoken to me.

"I'm not," I said truthfully. "I just feel really sad, that's all."

"So do we. Sadness has become part of our culture. I mean, we were alive, then we were slaughtered and raised as these skeletons, forced to kill our own families and friends."

I couldn't imagine what that was like. I had thought most of the Scourge to be mindless killing machines, which I supposed that most of them still were, depending on how degraded their minds had been when they'd been raised. But the people I was talking to seemed different. Indeed, the woman, whose name was Rose, vividly remembered her past life, although she could barely speak the language anymore. I was having trouble understanding her completely as she spoke, but got the gist of it.

"We speak Gutterspeak now. It's the common language of all undead. Only some of us can remember the languages we'd used to speak. Lady Sylvanas can still speak Thalassian, Common, and anything else she'd spoken before she was killed. But she knows Gutterspeak and some Demonic now."

A chill ran through me. I was growing very apprehensive of the thought of seeing Sylvanas now. Hamu's warnings came back to me. What if she didn't remember me? What if she hated me now? What if she blamed me for her death? What was I supposed to do if it all fell apart?

"You knew her before she died, didn't you?"

I looked at Rose. "Yes. I knew Sylvanas when she was alive. I…" I swallowed. "How changed is she?"

"I don't know what she was like before, so I'm not sure I can answer that. Many of us are afraid of her."

She'd been intimidating even in life. I remembered an instance where she'd been absolutely furious at one of her rangers, and all of them had looked positively terrified of her then. I couldn't imagine what she was like now.

"She's angry, very angry. The rest of us are sad, but she has hatred inside her."

"So do I, for Arthas."

"No, she hates everything. Anybody who's alive."

I stopped walking, "And you're taking us to see her?"

"She will not kill you. At least I don't think she will. She doesn't kill arbitrarily… not anymore, anyway."

By the time we arrived in Lordaeron, I was so nervous that I felt sick to my stomach, although I wondered whether that wasn't due to the smell of death surrounding us. I'd performed some spells for all of us living beings to make our air more breathable, and that had helped our comfort, but I didn't know whether it would do anything in an enclosed space. Furthermore, we were absolutely frozen. I'd never been outside of Quel'Thalas before the fall of Silvermoon, but it had been cold there at times because it was so up north despite the magics enchanting the place, which sometimes faltered because of a missed spell. Here, the cold seemed to permeate everything, and even my campfires didn't do much to alleviate that.

"How long ago did you free yourselves from the Scourge?"

It was the man, Duncan, who answered, haltingly, "Three months. We came here and kept building what Arthas had begun."

I nodded and said nothing else as I roasted a deer we'd caught. Most of the animals seemed untouched, but the previous day, we had killed a bear who had been plagued. Most of us were worried about whether the Plague of Undeath was still active in Tirisfal Glades, although Rose stated that there was no danger.

We ate quickly, before walking up to the ruins of the enormous city before us. It had been beautiful once, and the banners of Lordaeron still hung on either side of the street leading to the city gates. Sadness overwhelmed me at the thought of what had happened to the people, and tears pooled behind my eyes. They fell without my noticing it.

My legs felt heavy. I was going to see Sylvanas again. I had no idea what she would look like, or even if she was remotely similar to the woman I had fallen in love with. I got dizzy suddenly, and was aware I was going to be sick only a second before it happened. Breaking away from the group, I vomited into the bushes, sinking to my knees in the process.

"I can't…" I whispered, sobbing. "I just can't…"

The Forsaken said nothing. Only the tauren looked at me with sympathy in their eyes, and one of them, a shaman, came to me and placed a soothing hand on my back, "Come on, my lady, you have to. You came all the way here to see her."

But I hadn't anticipated how difficult it would be for me to do such a thing. The shaman supported me as we started to walk again, nearly having to carry me because my legs simply couldn't hold my weight.

We walked through the ruined city, which took some time, because it had been absolutely enormous. We rested in the throne room, which was, surprisingly, spotless. Lordaeron banners hung alongside Forsaken banners on the walls, and I wondered why the Forsaken hadn't taken those down.

"We used to be citizens of Lordaeron," said Rose. "We respect what there was here, and would never desecrate it." She took me to another room, where a tomb lay, highly polished. "This is King Terenas Menethil."

My head spun as I remembered talking to Sylvanas about whether or not King Anasterian was going to help him with what had been happening. I sank to my knees, shaking. "Oh, King Terenas… how could you have known what your son would do to you? That he would kill you and destroy the kingdom for the Scourge before invading my home and kill everyone I love?"

Rose stood by me as I cried, then helped me to my feet, "You still grieve."

"I am the last survivor of my village, and of my family. Literally everyone I knew there was murdered and raised." I took a deep breath, "Then, after what happened to Sylvanas…"

"I can understand that it was difficult for you."

I sincerely doubted that, but didn't voice it.

A few minutes later, we were on our way again, this time getting onto the large elevators that brought us down to the catacombs beneath Lordaeron itself. It grew unbearably cold as we descended, thus forcing me to use a spell on myself and my companions to make sure we didn't freeze to death.

"The Royal Quarter isn't very far," said Duncan, with an expression showing that he was trying to smile, though it was difficult to tell because his lower jaw was made of what appeared to be a steel plate.

"Does Sylvanas know we're coming?" I asked, feeling sick again.

He nodded.

I can't do it, I can't see her. What was I thinking? Better for me to remember her as she was, rather than to see her as whatever she's become!

But now that I was there, I couldn't turn back.

We got off the elevator, and even the spell I'd put on us to ward off the stench of decay was overpowered. I gagged, and it was only sheer will that stopped me from being sick again. However, not all of my companions were that lucky. One of the orcs had to sit down because he felt so sick, and I quickly performed a few spells that I had learned in Thunder Bluff to help with the smell.

"I'm sorry," said Rose. "We never really thought any living creature would come here… I suppose it's a bit of a shock."

"It's all right, Rose. The smell is a little overpowering, that's all. But this should help."

I could still smell death around me, but I'd been able to weave in the smell of freshly cut grass and flowers to it, which lessened the horrible effect to create a scent that wasn't quite pleasant, but at least bearable.

"Thank you, Faith," said the orc who was still sitting down. "I've smelled death before when I fought the necromancers of the Legion, but this was just…"

I nodded, "I know."

We began to walk, and I saw that instead of fresh water flowing through canals, the liquid was a green sludge, certainly not suitable for anyone to drink. I realized that the sewage from the capital city had been flowing down here, and the thought of it made me feel sick again.

I could never live here… the smell alone would kill me in a few days, and it doesn't seem sanitary…

Weird-looking rats skittered around, and I even saw a few maggots crawling around, making me miss not only Silvermoon but Thunder Bluff as well.

"I won't stay here more than is strictly necessary," said one of the tauren. "I mean no offense, but…"

"We understand. It's difficult for us too, sometimes. "Come, the Royal Quarter is just here. We're still building, so mind yourself and don't trip on exposed rocks."

It was obvious at a glance that the Royal Quarter was being built to accommodate a leader. Even if it hadn't been called that, we couldn't have missed the fact that everything there was cleaner, and the atmosphere much more breathable, than in the rest of the city.

As we walked through the twists and turns that made up the passageway to the center of the Royal Quarter, I felt myself growing faint. My heart and stomach had switched places with each other, so much so that I could barely breathe. I put a hand on one of the tauren, who wrapped his arm around me, murmuring that it was going to be okay.

I don't know what exactly I was expecting. I had last seen Sylvanas as an insubstantial form, which had had her vague appearance, and when her body had been flung at me, I'd cast a spell on it to halt decomposition so that it would still look like her. It had been the only thing I'd been able to do for her before the attack had begun. But ever since I'd heard that she had recovered her body, I had thought that she would look like herself.

I just hadn't expected her to look dead.

No! Sylvanas!

The air rushed out of my lungs when I saw her. My body grew cold, as though it had been plunged into frozen water, and my heart actually stopped beating for a moment. I felt a scream of agony building within me and clapped my hands over my mouth, keeping myself from releasing it. Someone was holding me close, and it was only then that I realized that I had burst into tears.

It was her, really her. My Sylvanas.

Her skin was now the pale grey of the dead, and her eyes, which had been a brilliant sky blue, were now a glowing and menacing red. Beneath her hood, I could see wisps of hair, which no longer looked like strands of woven sunbeams, but instead looks like pale yellow spider webs. She was still breathtakingly beautiful, but in a terrible way that I couldn't conceive of.

I lost consciousness.

Sylvanas was beside me, holding my hand, tears running down her face.

"My Faith…" she whispered.

As I looked at her, her bright face dissolved into a horrible skeletal thing, turning as white as bone, skin hanging off of it in rags. I screamed, opening my eyes.

I was still in the royal quarter, but had been placed on a couch, with a cold cloth on my forehead. I felt vile, as though I was going to faint again, but forced myself into a sitting position.

"Stay down, child," came an unearthly voice, familiar, yet completely alien.

"Sylvanas…" I whispered.

She wasn't standing far from me, and was listening to something one of the orcs was saying. The tauren shaman who had supported me earlier bent over me, murmuring a soothing spell.

"I am not injured, my friend," I said quietly.

"Your soul is injured," he told me.

I smiled, "You can't heal that, I'm afraid. But thank you."

Sylvanas glanced at me, "How do you feel?"

"I've had better days, thank you for asking."

"Lydon," she said, "escort our guests to their chambers, and have something prepared for them so that they don't go hungry. The elf will remain with me for now."

The elf?

I watched as my companions left the royal quarter, leaving me along with the creature who had once been Sylvanas Windrunner. Fear laced my body.

"Your friends told me why they're here. Thrall wants allies on this continent, and I'm quite happy to give him our allegiance, although I'm thinking he's going to need some convincing. But I must say that I'm a little confused to find you amongst them. What is it that you're doing here?"

"You know what I'm doing here, Sylvanas," I answered in Thalassian.

She looked at me, her expression unreadable. I had no idea whether she was remembering something or getting ready to kill me. I looked right back at her, knowing I wouldn't be able to hold her smoldering gaze for very long, but trying my best not to look away.

Finally, I spoke again, "You don't remember, do you?"

She blinked, "Remember what?"

"Me."

"I remember you. Faith Everstone, a mage who desperately wanted to go to the Academy to become one of my rangers, but with absolutely no chances of making it."

"That's one hell of a way to summarize a century of us knowing each other."

"What happened before my death really doesn't concern me anymore. I am queen of Undercity now, commanding a force greater than I ever could have in Quel'Thalas." She called a guard, "Escort her to her friends."

Trying to remember that I couldn't have expected her to be exactly the same after she had died and been raised to fight for the Scourge, I got to my feet, willing myself not to faint again. In the doorway, I looked back at her, "Sylvanas?*

She stilled, listening.

"I'm sorry."