~*~ Author's Notes ~*~

Someone does a lot of yelling and venting in chapter. Prepare for loads of pent up frustration to be spewed all over these pages and not end until the last paragraph. I tried to shake the chapter and get some of the spew off, but it had soaked in good and wasn't coming out.

~*~*~Chapter 17 ~*~*~

Kayas woke slowly. There was a warm flooding sensation threw all her limbs; she was floating on clouds. Someone glided towards her. Held out a hand. She took it without question, trusting the loving blue eyes. It pulled her.

Reality streamed back. Kayas awoke very quickly now. She didn't know how long she had been out and her limbs ached from disuse. Moving them hurt from being atrophied into a laying position for so long.

She was feline, but laying on a bed. It smelled of perfume and silk. Cracking her eyes brought skull-searing pain for several seconds. These eyes had not been used in quite a long time. Slowly she relaxed, working each muscle by clenching and unclenching them. Get the blood flowing and she would be able to move them without pain.

Feeling like someone had taken a mallet to her entire body was good right? It meant she was alive… right?

Squealing as loud as she could without pulling a bruised rib she caught someone's attention. A giant black panther leapt up on her bead. It was three times her size easily and almost as big as the bed. The little Druid froze in surprise. 'Who would let this thing in here?' Flashbacks of the cat that nearly ended her life in Auberdine streamed back.

It sniffed her ear, then eyes, then breath. Then licked her. Laying down next to her, it's warm body nuzzled into her rather fittingly. It continued to lick her head and neck. An intimacy that was as alien to her as groping someone to say hello. If this cat turned out to be some form another Druid had managed, s/he was going to get its gonads clawed off.

As she continued to flex her muscles, gaining range of motion very slowly, her gaze darted around the room. This wasn't anything she recognized. Rising slowly, pushing away from the giant black cat, she slid to the floor with a soft thump.

It was dark in here. Someone didn't expect her to be awake. Everything from the floors, walls, roof and even her fur looked ashen and gray. Only the fresh linens on the bed had an ounce of color. The gray was sickly, the Druid decided; she didn't like it at all.

There were feet moving across the old wooden floor outside the room. The door was opened, light flooding into the room. A figure stopped in the doorway, gazing at her. She turned away from brightness of the streaming light.

The Priest came in and shut the door. Gently he walked over and picked her up. She didn't resist when he laid her on the bed once more. "Have you the stomach to eat?" His voice was very soft, gentle. Like snow falling into a fire he was descending and waiting to be burned.

Turning away, burying her face into the cat, she refused to acknowledge him. He had left her there to die at that Elune-Forsaken woman's hands. And instead of letting her perish in the mire and putting an end to all these miseries he continued to heap upon her he instead pulled her out and brought her back to life. Or denied her the release of death to begin with. Whichever.

"I expect you to be angry with me." There was a soft creek as a door was opened and an object removed from a cabinet across the room. "I deserve your wrath." His weight added to the springs made them screech in protest.

One hand came to rest lightly on her back, seeking unexplainable permissions. It felt wrong, like he was touching her threw a glove. "Please look." When she refused to move, he reached over to turn her head.

The panther put a paw on the back of his hand, all five claws extended to max length.

The Druid declines your invitation. Get lost.

Jetadiah wavered as he stood to leave, dejected less because of the enormous cat and more from his own inner turmoil. He left something on the bed and went, closing the door softly behind. The feel of his presence lingered in the room.

Sitting up, the Druid looked down. It was a flat square of wood lying face down. Curious, she tested turning into her upright form. A moment latter she was looking at ashen skin that blended in with ashen boards and ashen windows.

Lifting the plank of wood revealed a hanging mirror on the other side. Even before she could wonder why it was lying face down she knew. The Plague had changed her. She had felt it inside, could feel it even now, as it had started to work even before the life bled from her body.

An undead monster now, like the Warlock?

There was a sob and a whimper of despair, her fluttering heart threatening to flee from her chest in sorrow. The cat answered softly, as if to try and reassure her. Heart plunging threw her stomach, the Druid tried hard to hold down the bile. To be a disgusting dead thing-! To be one of them. Never allowed to run the forests of Ashenvale again; never to see her family: never to walk the beaches of Darkshore with her friends. They would kill her on sight now.

Like Sylvannas and her sisters…?

Tears dropped onto her hand where it rested on the back of the mirror. 'I don't have to look,' she though. 'I could just… accept it?' But that idea was rejected before it fully formed. It wasn't in her to run away from the truth. Sooner or latter the mirror would be exposed and she would draw it to her face.

It took several minutes to go threw with it. She started with her hands, realizing it wasn't just the gloom of this room. They were ashen and numb. That's why it felt like he touched her threw a glove. Her nails were tinted an ugly dark purple. Like a particular fungus that grows on trees in Darkshore when too many furbolgs wee there.

Picking up the mirror slowly, she turned it over. It took another moment to look into it.

The face that stared back was not her own. It was gray where once it had been a light purple and sunken in, like a starving refugee she had once seen on the road from Durotar. The small lips that once were pinkish were now dull purple. Lifeless. Eyes that had at once been silver, then amber as she had started to perfect the Druidic arts, was the most shocking change: a pale yellow glow from solid white orbs. Just like the fel-damned Warlock.

Her hair. A huffed sob shook her shoulders, dislodging a clump of hair. Dropping the tool on the bed, both hands went to her head. The locks were unbound, falling loosely down her back. Picking up the mirror, she looked closer. Black as sin without even a touch of highlights that might make it pretty with some treatment. It was frayed and fuzzy from not having been washed properly in so long.

Anger ripped threw her. Vain as every elfin race was, and as much as they despised each other, they all understood one thing: Do. NOT. Touch. The. HAIR!*

She leapt from the bed, catching balance when her stomach churned in protest, adrenaline flowing. Smashing the mirror against the wall she wheeled out of the room, slamming the door against the wall as she threw it open.

He was waiting down the hall in the only other room in the broken down house. He balanced on a two-legged stool by the fire, leaning in and stirring a cook pot. A place had been polished off on the hearth and a loaf of bread was baking on the stones there. He wore a simple linen shirt and breeches, and an apron he had once explained Corrosa could not borrow because he used it when 'tinkering'. The warlock had found a tarp to keep gore off her clothing instead.

That he didn't look at her boiled her blood right good. All of her anger and frustration, of her sorrow and pain, of her sickening longing for her homelands and of the utter feeling of betrayal came pouring out. A damn had broken in her heart and there was no stopping the flood.

"What did she do to me? What did you let that thing make me?" Her voice was high pitched, sounding just like the screaming adolescent she was. Disused as her voice often was, it was strong. Maestra herself had commented on it…

He still didn't look at her. "Your" gulp ",alive." The last word became a stumbling block.

She raged then. Incensed that he would dare drag her into an enemy capital city and then leave her alone with that other thing, she mocked him mercilessly. "I was very much alive before you left me. I tried to tell you it was a bad idea but, noooo, Jetadiah knows best!" The last three words were said in a peppy, mocking voice. Though it may not be a good idea to mock such a powerful man, a Priest's job was to listen to the woes of others – especially if he was the harbinger.

Despite not having a talent with speaking, the Druid was incited to strike out as much as she could to spread her misery.

One shoulder turned half towards her, his eyes still glued to the pot, "I am truly sorry for my laps in judgment. I hadn't known the Dark Lady would get to you before I could get to her." As if to offer up a glimmer of hope in the gloom of her darkest hour he informed, "You are still kaldorie, still a Druid of the Wild, still a child of Cenarius and Elune… for the most part."

There had been a small uplifting in her spirit, the part of her that didn't like being so upset and would forgive any transgression if balance to her soul could be restored. With the last line it had snuffed out the spark. Her muscles refused to move. If they did she was going to tear him to pieces. Starting with his immaculate black hair. "For the most part!" she fumed. "I don't have pupils!"

"Ah… a minor setback." The tone was one he had taken when some explosive charge he had made once had blown up in the bag and his horse lost a leg. The Warlock had laughed so hard she fell off her mount. The dreadsteed tried to smash her face into the ground but only got two fingers.

The Druid found something nearby and threw it at him, "You're a terrible liar, Priest!" The folded pair of sox bounced off his shoulder. He looked down at them in surprise, then back to his pot. His mount had to be 'repaired' at a horse graveyard, where some necromancers had re-atatched a freshly dead leg to the beast. The horse had been surrounded all night by things tearing and eating at the meat of the leg. Worse still, it had screamed all night when it felt every bite and tear. In the morning it looked the same as the other leg had – meatless and scarred with fang marks.

"I can fix it…"

"You can fix the Plague? You can? Then why do the Forsaken still exist?" When he didn't answer fast enough she put a toe over the invisible line she knew better than to cross, "If you could fix it when why haven't you fixed Corrosa?"

He stopped breathing, one hand going to his chest as if to clutch his still heart. Even in the midst of her anger the Druid felt a twinge of regret. Perhaps he had tried and perhaps he had failed? "Just a few tweeks and-"

"I am not your toy, Priest! Or is this how your order does things in Silvermoon? I hear the Blood Elves are addicted something fierce to your demonic magic. Perhaps you think there is some sort of Plague that can cure you and wish to experiment-"

"No," There was so much pain in his sob, so much hurt that came with her accusations, "That's not why I kept you-"

"My skin is gray and I can't feel it; am I really alive or are you lying to me like your kind have lied so much in the past?" She spoke of the Horde, those brutes that savaged Stormwind and burned down half of Kalimdor in their rampage out of the Dark Portal.

"Aesthetics-"

"I like blue hair." Her voice was still loud, echoing, but loosing power, "Blue! I saved up for two weeks chasing rats around the Sunshadow Farms to be able to afford to change it!" She would be able to stay furious if it didn't seem like every word she said weren't slicing him to the bone and cutting at his heartstrings.

He was slumped over, the weight of his crime resting fully on his shoulders. If it were possible to look like an old man and a weeping child at once, only an immortal elf could do it. "I am truly sorry. I never meant for this to happen. I though Corrosa could protect you-"

"Stop right there." She mocked the voice of her school teacher, "'Today were going to learn about the undead warlocks. What do undead warlocks hate more than anything else.'" Now used her own voice, "Well, that's easy: they hate everything equally!" Back to mocking teacher voice, "'That's right, Kayas, they don't discriminate. So if you have an enemy in your custody and decide to keelhaul them threw enemy capital cities, what is the one way that ensures they will suffer at your hands the most?'" back to her voice, "Oh, I don't know… put a warlock in charge of keeping them 'safe' and then run off?" Teacher voice, "'Correct! Cookies for you.'"

"She tried."

"The fel she did." So much venom in her conviction, "Sylvanas didn't even say a word to her and she sat down like a good little pet. The Forsaken are the Banshee Queen's minions; you expect them to stand up to her? To be able to? HA!"

There was a long moment of silence. The Druid knew her assessment had been exactly correct, though she did not know the details. The Priest's head was bowed, "Please be angry at me, but do not be angry at Corrosa. There was nothing she could do. If it had been anyone else-"

"If it had been anyone else, I'd have been chopped in half, lit up in flames, eaten or made to match sox for the rest of my days." In truth, she had no idea what the Troll leader would do. She heard they were a pretty weird lot. Speaking of sox, she grabbed two more handfuls and threw them all at the Priest. He still refused to look at her. "What else is wrong with me? I can feel it inside me, the damage the Plague did."

He took a deep breath, trying to steady his quivering eyebrows and bobbing ears. "Your forms were … um… changed." He ducked as shoes went flying by his head. They smacked the wall and sent dust into the air. "All the forms have gray fur or skin. The Plague … uh… infected the open wounds. I managed to heal your mouth where –" and she noticed his left hand was bandaged, "you bit me, but where it touched your gums and teeth I couldn't fix the black staining."

"My teeth are black too?"

"Just the," dodge, "tips of the fangs where it broke the skin and some of the gum around the molars," dodge, "but I was able to heal your broken bones and the," dodge-dodge, "organ damage. I'm afraid the yellowing of your eyes is permanent. The plague tends to," dodgedodgedodgeblock- he was rambling now, "um… to put it shortly," block, "discolor the eyes a bit. Most Scourge have ghostlight eyes**, but the Forsaken have souls, for the most part, and it makes their eyes glow yellow with inner light. You see-" whap, right in the back of the back of the head, "it's not a bad thing. Asthetics, you see? It could be worse-"

"Why wont you look at me?" she fumed, the petulant child inside her whining so loud it drowned out her anger at the moment. She didn't care why Forsaken eyes shown yellow: he was telling her all this with the anonymity of a turned back. It's like avoiding eye contact when confessing to a crime.

"Um… there are some clothes in the wardrobe in your room."

Looking down she realized she was wearing nary a stitch. Blushing from head to ashen toe, she dropped into the feline form and wailed all the way into the bedroom. He could have said something earlier!

*Quote: Lor'thremar Theron, Regent Lord of Qual'Thalas

** Wowiki article, "Forsaken"