AN - Hi everyone! Thank you so much for reading this far into Fall and Rebirth. I'm going to try and keep updating as much as I can, ut I won't manage to update every day, I'm afraid, as things are getting a little busy for me. I will promise at least two updates a week, and maybe more, if I can. Until then, please enjoy!

The cold woke me up in the middle of the night. I shivered in bed, a cold sweat running down my back. I murmured a spell to try and warm myself up, but nothing happened. Nothing.

I tried sitting up, but couldn't find the strength to do so. My hands and feet were icy cold, and when I tried to swallow, I found that my throat felt as though it had been lined with shards of glass.

It was a good thing that I wasn't sleeping alone in the room. I gave a groan and coughed, which drove a spike of pain through my head, and one of the people in the room, a female troll named Ten'za got up and came to me.

"You all right?" she asked me.

I tried to speak, but wasn't able to do more than whisper, "I don't think so…"

She hissed and put a hand to my forehead. "You have a fever." She looked at me for a second, then left.

A fever. My eyes widened and I looked at my sleeping companions. I had a fever, hours after fighting something that spread the Plague.

I rolled to my left, meaning to get out of bed, but all I managed to do was crash to the floor, hurting myself. I couldn't stay there. I had to go into isolation. I started to cry.

Ten'za came back, and she ran to me when she saw me on the ground, "Captain," she said. "You need to stay in bed."

"Stay away…" I hissed. "I… Plague…"

"It can't be the Plague, Captain," came the soothing voice of a tauren. "You wouldn't be getting symptoms this quickly."

Slowly, he picked me up and carried me outside the dormitory. By then, everyone was awake, and I caught several worried looks on their faces.

"Most likely," he said, "you drained yourself of magic, and caught a very bad chill because of that storm."

"Is Sylvanas still here?"

"No. Do you want us to contact her?"

I shook my head briefly, "Not now…" The last thing I wanted was for her to return. "Are… are you sure it's not the Plague?"

"You wouldn't be feeling this sick this fast," he said. He carried me to the infirmary, and set me down on a softer bed than the one I'd been sleeping in. Gently, he covered me in warm blankets. "Besides, the Plague of Undeath primarily affects humans. You are a Sin'dorei. The chances of you catching the Plague when you were standing several feet away from the creature is slim."

I shivered, despite the blankets, and he put a hand on my forehead, murmuring a quiet spell. I closed my eyes, and saw an earthly green glow behind my eyelids. It was the green of spring leaves, and I could smell the plains of Mulgore suddenly. Warmth slowly spread through my body, and I immediately fell asleep again.

When I awoke the following day, I was no longer shivering, but I still felt horribly weak. Surprisingly, Rotvine was sitting in front of my bed, reading a book. The site was so unusual that I laughed a little, convinced that my fever was making me hallucinate.

"I'm glad you're feeling well enough to laugh," he said, looking up. "Sylvanas will be happy"

"You guys have to stop telling Sylvanas everything that happens to me!" I said. I tried to cry it out, but my voice was completely shot.

"Oh, she gave us explicit orders to tell her everything that you do."

"I was going to write to her about this myself, when I felt better." I was. I had even thought about how to phrase it so that she wouldn't completely freak out.

"Well, you should write to her about it, but it doesn't matter. She already knows. She also knows that you were scared it was the Plague."

"How could she possibly know that? And what are you doing here anyway?"

"I'm your bodyguard until Hamu arrives. He'll be here tomorrow. And until then, you are not allowed out of here."

"I don't need… if it's not the Plague, I'm fine, you can go. I'm sure you have better things to do."

"The Banshee Queen has ordered me to stay by your side, so I will stay by your side. That's the only thing I have to do now."

"But I'm sure there are other things you'd rather be doing."

"Faith, most of us don't have the luxury of questioning the queen's orders like you do. When she asks us to do something, we do it. And we've learned that if she asks us to do something that pertains to you, we'd better do it right, or she'll have us executed."

"Executed?" My voice came out as a squeak. Executed? "What do you mean?"

"Ah, I'm not sure I should tell you."

"Sylvanas has had people executed for not following orders when it came to me?"

Rotvine closed his book and looked at me, "You know how she feels about you, right? You do understand that whenever something bad happens to you, even if you just cut your finger, she takes it badly?"

"Yes, I know." I looked down, feeling uneasy. I still had a hard time believe that this was the case, but she'd come to Warsong Hold when she'd heard about the flyer taking me.

"Everyone in Undercity knows that when they're in battle, they have to protect you no matter what. Winning the battle is secondary to you being safe."

"But that's insane."

"Nobody ever suggested that the Banshee Queen was sane."

"Out of order, Rotvine."

"But you have to admit that it's true."

"After everything that's happened to her, you expect her to be okay?"

"I know people who suffered as badly as she did due to the Scourge. They were also killed and raised, and also broke free from the Scourge afterwards. And they're not quite as… sadistic, as she is."

I shook my head, "She can be a little hard to live with, I'll give you that."

"A little hard to live with," he repeated. "That's one way to put it."

"But you still worship the ground she walks on."

"Yes I do, and I would do anything she asks of me. Which is why I'm sitting here in front of you, reading a book while you get some much-needed rest."

Sadistic. I'd never heard any Forsaken call Sylvanas sadistic before. I supposed she was, and it was a part of her that I somehow found seductive. It made me think about the way I viewed her. I'd always been attracted to her strength. I'd always known her as Ranger-General of Silvermoon, the title had been a part of her, as had been the power that came with it. Would I still have fallen in love with her had she not been general? I couldn't figure that out, as I'd never known her as anything else.

Except that now she was a queen, a leader of the Horde. She held more power now than she'd ever held, and I knew that it wasn't reason I loved her. Again, it was a part of her, but I would have loved her, regardless. Maybe now I was holding onto a memory of her. Memories of what we'd shared together and what we could have become.

"So you're not going to move from that spot."

"No. And don't ask me to, I won't listen to you."

"What if I want privacy for something?"

"I won't look," he said, opening his book again and beginning to read.

"Wait a minute… the ones who were on the roof with me, she didn't punish them, right? Rotvine? Because it wasn't their fault that I was taken."

Rotvine looked at me, "They all stepped forward to tell her that they had been with you. I don't know what she'll do to them."

I threw the covers off myself and tried to get to my feet, but Rotvine was there in a flash, holding me back.

"Don't be stupid, Captain. Stay in bed before you make yourself worse."

"But I have to –."

"You have to stay in bed, or the Banshee Queen will have my head on a silver platter."

I sighed in frustration, "Could you please get me a quill, ink and parchment? I won't leave, while you're gone, damn it."

Rotvine appeared to hesitate, but finally left me alone for a bit, coming back with what I'd asked him for, along with a writing board. I quickly scribbled an urgent note to Undercity.

Dear Sylvanas,

Please don't punish the soldiers who were on the roof with me when I was taken. There was nothing they could have done to prevent it. The creature grabbed me from behind and carried me off even before they could turn around to find me. There was a snowstorm happening, and it was difficult to see under the best of circumstances.

And what in the world is this about victory being secondary, because my safety is the primary concern? What are you trying to do? Stop trying to protect me all the time, baby. Your job is to protect Undercity, not just me. So, while I sincerely appreciate what you're trying to do, you need to stop putting your soldiers' lives in jeopardy. I'm not worth everything being destroyed.

I love you,

Faith

I sealed the letter in an envelope put a spell on it before handing it to Rotvine, "Please get this to the courier. I want it to arrive in Undercity by tomorrow."

"Faith, whatever you wrote in there –."

"Won't incriminate you in the slightest. And if it does, I'll talk to Sylvanas myself. Please go. In the meantime, I'll take a nap, if you don't mind." I gave him a weak smile and sank back against my pillow, pulling the covers up to my chin and closing my eyes. I didn't want to believe that Sylvanas would be acting so irrationally because of me.

Sylvanas didn't answer my note, which was unusual. I wasn't sure whether Rotvine got any missives from her, because he didn't talk to me about that anymore, but I did see all of the troops who had been with me on the roof. They looked unharmed, and one of them thanked me for intervening with Sylvanas. I could only imagine what she would have done to them had anything worse happened to me.

Things at Warsong Hold began to calm down a little after the death of Varidus. It was obvious to us now that he had been controlling most of the Scourge in our area of the Borean Tundra, because it became easier for us to beat back the Scourge that was attacking us at Warsong Hold. A week after I got out of the infirmary, I took a large team to the Sands of Nasam, and we began to battle the Scourge there too. The Alliance soldiers were stunned at our help, but they believed me when I told them that we were only interested in fighting the Scourge.

"Mark my words," I told my troops, "if I see any of you harming a soldier of the Alliance here, you'll have me to answer to, and you won't like it. We are operating under white flag rules."

"Does Sylvanas know you're doing this?" asked Eliza, who had joined us the previous week from the Howling Fjord.

"What the Banshee Queen needs to know is that we're fighting the Scourge, nothing else."

We fought well that day. By the time the afternoon waned, turning the cold blue sky to pale shades of orange and pink, the Sands of Nasam were running with the blood and ichor of our slain enemies. A large fire had been lit in the center of the area, where we were burning the corpses. An unimaginable smell wafted towards me, making me feel sick to my stomach, and I felt exhausted again, but it was a good exhaustion this time.

"What do we do now?" Rotvine asked me.

"We go back to Warsong Hold and tell Garrosh that we've cleared the Scourge out of the Borean Tundra from the Sands of Nasam to the north of the Warsong Slaughterhouse. The nests have been taken care of as well, so I think we did all right for now. Let's go."

We started our journey back to Warsong Hold, getting there an hour after darkness had fully fallen on the land. Normally, the Scourge would have been attacking at full force, but that night, there were only a couple of flyers feebly trying to attack the hold. A shaman on the wall quickly dispatched them with well-placed fire spells that briefly lit up the night.

"Good job," I told the young female orc. She smiled at me and nodded.

"Thank you, Captain."

I went down to Garrosh to deliver my report about the Scourge. Hamu, having only just arrived because of a delay he'd had during travel, was with me. I found the commander for the Warsong offensive eating roast swine with indecent enthusiasm, and glaring at me over the top of his wine glass. He belched, dribbling red liquid onto his plate. It was with difficulty that I repressed a wince.

"So. You went to help the Alliance again. Maybe you should switch sides."

"We didn't help the Alliance," I replied. "We went there to eliminate the threat of the Scourge in these parts. From what I can tell, we eliminated three generals, and several necromancers along with the Sunwell knows how many Nerubians. I lost count after two hundred. Things should be easier here from now on, and we might be able to spare more troops to go inland and tackle the Scourge elsewhere."

"Well, that will be my decision," he said, taking a bite of meat. The sound of it tearing from the bone sounded like the page of a book being ripped in half.

But as it turned out, it wasn't Garrosh's decision at all. Sylvanas called the Magi Corps to Venomspite to deal with the Scourge that was attacking the town there from the fields below the necropolis of Naxxramas, and I had been called to Wyrmrest Temple by the Red Dragonflight.

"The Red Dragonflight?" I wondered, reading Sylvanas' orders. "Why would they want me?" The note didn't specify anything, so I wrote back, giving her the same report I'd given Garrosh, and telling her that we would be on our way immediately.

It wouldn't be an easy journey, as we would be traveling on the road that went through an area called Transborea, which was by and large controlled by the Scourge. We would go through Taunka'le village, a village held by distant cousins of the tauren, called the taunka, but it was close to centers of the Scourge in northeastern Borean Tundra.

"What do you know about that area?" I asked Garrosh, determined to force information out of him even if it killed me.

"You won't like it," he said. He pointed to a map, "You'll find the Temple City of En'kilah there, and above that is the necropolis of Naxxanar. There's a crashed necropolis south of there, and as far as I know, there are cultists in there."

"Fantastic," I whispered. "So we could either have a quick journey and race through, or stay a while and try to fight these fiends."

"You can try it. But they'll make what we faced here look like child's play." He looked at me condescendingly. He hadn't liked me since I had arrived at Warsong Hold, and when Sylvanas had carried me back after the confrontation with Varidus, he had liked me even less, thinking me weak. I hated him.

"Be that as it may, we need to go through there," I said.

"You're not going to ask me for reinforcements, are you?"

"Of course not," I told him. He wouldn't have given them to me if I'd asked. "We'll take the main road to Taunka'le Village, and make our way to Dragonblight from there. We should be able to rest for a bit in Agmar's Hammer before we go on."

"If there's anything left of you."

"Well, we'll just have to make sure of that, won't we?" I asked, rolling the map back up. "Thank you for your hospitality, Commander Hellscream. I trust that you will call upon us again should you need us."

"Good luck then," he said. He glared at me again, until I took my leave of him.

When I went back to the dormitory I had shared with the other fighters of Warsong Hold, I saw that Saurfang was waiting for me by my bed. He turned around when he saw me.

"Captain Everstone," he said. "I know Garrosh won't ever admit to it, but you and your Magi Corps did a very good job here. Thank you for everything."

"I'd say it was a pleasure, High Overlord, but we both know how much I hate having anything to do with the Scourge. I am happy to have met you, though." I shook his hand. "I wish it had been under different circumstances."

"Maybe someday, we will be able to enjoy a meal together without having to look over our shoulder."

I smiled, "I would really like that."

"Good luck to you, Captain," he told me.

"You can call me Faith," I said.

He smiled at me, "And you may call me Varok, if you don't mind."

I nodded. I would be sorry to leave the veteran fighter behind. "I don't mind at all."

"My son Dranosh is in Dragonblight. If you have the chance to, go and see him. I'm sure that he will be able to use your services against the Scourge."

"I will be delighted to help him in any way I can."

He handed me my bag, clapping my shoulder and walking with me to where my troops were waiting. Those of us who were alive had mounts, but all of the Forsaken would be on foot for the journey. I expected that it would take about a week to reach Taunka'le Village, if we didn't have any setbacks. Lady greeted me with a happy squawk and a nuzzle before I climbed onto her back. Next to me, Hamu mounted the great white kodo beast he had brought with him from Mulgore, while a couple of orcs who would be coming with us climbed upon their wolves.

"Let's go, everyone. We ride east!"

And so, our journey began. The day was cold and clear, without a cloud in the sky and a feeble sun trying to shine down upon us, offering us absolutely no warmth whatsoever. We didn't encounter many problems on our way, save for a few plagued creatures who needed to be put out of their misery, but for the most part, we got lucky until we reached an area completely covered in ice and snow, on the fourth day: the border to the region of Transborea.

We halted, decided to make camp for an hour to give everyone a rest. I noticed that it was colder here, so I cast a quick spell on all the living people and creatures with us.

"What do you think?" Hamu asked me, looking around.

"I think that it's going to get much more difficult for us from here on out." I took a quick mental inventory of everything and everyone with us. We had tents and supplies for the living, and one hundred and twelve soldiers, most of them Forsaken.

"Taunka'le Village is just over there," said Rotvine, consulting his own map. "We should be there in an hour, if we hustle."

I gave Lady a quick rubdown, smoothing her feathers with warming oil so that she wouldn't feel the cold as badly. She nudged me in thanks. "That's my pretty girl," I told her, wrapping my arms around her strong neck for a moment. "Are you ready for another trek?"

She gave a soft squawk and nudged me again. I chuckled.

"All right everyone, gear up. Make sure your mounts are okay to keep going. It all looks quiet out there, but you know how the Scourge can be. And be careful, there are sinkholes nearby, and we know what that means.

We all mounted up and began to move again. Snow started to fall as we did so, looking completely unlike the snow that fell in Tirisfal Glades in the winter.

We were moving slowly, looking around to make sure no ambush was coming. I hated to behave that way, but we couldn't afford any slip-ups now.

I rode a little ahead of the column, scouting for traps, and, finding none, waved everyone forward.

Taunka'le Village was cozily nestled between the Scourged city Garrosh had told me about, and the Geyser Fields near the Scourge sinkhole. We arrived just in time to see several ghouls quickly shambling by the village in obvious attack formation.

I swore under my breath, spurring Lady forward. She sprinted, and we reached the tail-end of the Scourge attack, slaying them before they were able to enter the village. I cast fire spells as quickly as I could, felling ghouls at a distance while Lady clawed at the ones who were closest to us.

My soldiers were right behind me, beginning to battle immediately, with very little concern for themselves. Ten minutes later, it was all over. Members of the Scourge lay in heaps around the village, several body parts scattered all over the place. Carrion birds were already beginning to circle around the village, not daring to land yet.

Someone walked towards us, leaning on a staff. It was a taunka, and his muzzle was bleeding, but he looked powerful. A chieftain.

"You saved us, strangers," he said haltingly, choosing his words in a tongue that everyone would be able to understand.. "Thank you."

"It was the least we could do, Chieftain," I answered in Taur-ahe.

"Can we offer you shelter? There are many of you, but we can make room."

"Thank you, that's very kind of you. My name is Faith Everstone, and these are the First Magi Corps of Undercity. We're on our way to Dragonblight to fight the Scourge there."

The chieftain nodded, "I am Chieftain Wintergale, and I welcome you to Taunka'le Village, Faith Everstone. I have heard of you through some others who have passed through here. You may stay here for as long as you wish."

"Thank you. If we might be of use to you in any way, please do not hesitate to let us know. We have tents so that we won't take up too much space."

"I'll set up the tents near the walls," said Rotvine.

I nodded to him as he began to get to work with several other Forsaken. A taunka warrior walked towards Hamu, showing him where we could stable our mounts. Chieftain Wintergale gently took my arm and led me inside one of the larger buildings, where warmth came over me.

"We have heard of the deeds of the First Magi Corps," he said to me, guiding me to sit at a rustic wooden table. Someone brought me a mug of warm tea, and I thanked the woman, smiling at her.

"We have unofficial orders to help anybody in Northrend against the Scourge. If we can do anything for you, we will."

"I might have to take you up on that offer."

I sipped at my tea and nodded, "Of course. Please, tell me what you need."

He sighed, "Things have been difficult here for a long while. The Scourge has not stopped trying to topple us. I know that several Longwalkers have been taken to the fallen necropolis north of here, and we have not been able to get them back."

I nodded again, "Talramas."

"Yes. Never mind what goes on in that accursed city just outside our gates, and in the necropolis above."

"One thing at a time, Chieftain," I said. "I can get a team together and help rescue the Longwalkers that have been taken. While we're at it, we might as well destroy any Scourge there, so as to make the necropolis unusable. Once that is done, we can tackle the city."

Chieftain Wintergale looked at me with wide eyes filled with tears, "Thank you. I will gladly accept your aid."

I turned my head to find Hamu standing there. He nodded to me and walked back out, presumably to tell Rotvine and the others about what we were going to do.

"We can go right away if you'd like."

"Oh, no. It's getting dark, and it would be a bad idea for you to venture there now. It would be best to go at noon tomorrow. The Scourge will be less active with the sun."

"But not by much. The sun isn't very strong here, I'm afraid." But I gave another nod, "We will set off at first light, with fifty of my troops."

"You have no idea ow relieved I am to hear this, Faith. They have been missing for days, and we haven't been able to go after them because of the attacks."

"I understand. We'll do everything we can to help you."

He put his hand over mine, squeezing it gently, "Your reputation was not mistaken. People say you have a very big heart."

"One that gets me into trouble, I'm afraid," I laughed.

"Still, it isn't often that complete strangers offer to help us in that manner. Most people don't want to get involved."

"We are here to fight the Scourge, Chieftain. And we will do so until our dying breath, I promise you that."

The people of Taunka'le Village had a feast for us that night, making hot and hearty stew for us, which was welcome after days on living on military rations. They seemed so glad of our presence that it reminded me of my time in Mulgore. I missed my tauren family suddenly, and wondered when I would be able to see Taisha and Atalo again. I hoped it would be soon.