~*~ Author's Notes ~*~
I have a folder specifically set aside for this chapter that includes all 4 drafts, the character write ups and the multiple outlines and notepads brimming with the details I'm going to have to work into latter chapters for the sake of trimming length. The original chapter was 12 pages long – edited.
The Banshee Queen is a patient woman and can, of all the faction leaders, honestly say she doesn't care where her subjects originated – anyone is fair game as long as they can be used to further her objectives.
~*~ Chapter 25 ~*~
Kayas turned and tried to run again, only to have the Dark Lady appear before her once more. "Don't care to spend some time with your Queen?" There was laughter on the wind that came from anywhere but the perfectly slicked mouth.
Kayas shifted, shot upright, "I am kaldorie; you are not my Queen." The conviction didn't sound nearly as absolute as she wished. Was she still a Night Elf after what the plague had done to her?
The Dark Lady had come prepared for an argument. What she wanted with a Druid, Kayas had no idea, though her claim to the smaller elf standing before her was solidified shortly. "You may thank the High Priest for saving your life, and curse him thrice over for not letting you die. There is enough plague in you to corrupt the very ground you walk on, were it not already blighted."
The Druid was horrified, remembering how the sleeping seed of grass had sprung up where she trod over them in the Ghostlands. She had seen the sweeping forests of Qual'thalas, both at the prime of health and the weakest throws of death. To think that anywhere she treaded would succumb to the same….
The Banshee Queen had come ready for a demonstration as well. She clenched fist and raised and made a swift hand gesture downward- causing every muscle in the little Druid's body to stiffen in response. As if obeying an unspoken command, her body drug itself to the ground in a kneeling position, head bowed.
"You see," the Dark Lady smiled, "Any Forsaken I beget belong to me, and that includes his precious Corrosa. I entered your veins before you hit the surface, allowing the plague quick access to your bloodstream. My efforts paid off; the Priest could not save you in time to stop the transformation making you one of mine."
From her position on the ground the Druid strained against the invisible chains, tears seeping from eyes silted with effort, "I did not invade your city," she wailed, "I did nothing to incur your anger!"
A huffed, scornful sound was the undead Queen's response, "Don't be so pretensions; you must understand this has nothing to do with you. I have a great many in my employ, the High Priest chief among them."
Kayas understood then. The Banshee Queen had cursed her with this half-life to punish the Priest. He was not her subject and so she could command him directly, and so she had lashed out at what he held dear to force his compliance. Corrosa, from his own admittance also too important to harm, had been made to heel as she was now while the Dark Lady carved her mark on the Priest's pet.
But the kaldorie would not give up so easily, "I am not yours; I am not Forsaken. I am kaldorie and my heart belongs to Teldrassil."
"Your heart will belong to a box I mail back to your doting mother if you truly wish to test me, whelp. And I will follow it to whatever backwood village you crawled out of and collect ever heart there and send them all to Teldrassil if that is truly where you think they belong."
There was no mistaking the truth of ever world or the abilities of the Dark Lady to track the package threw the Twisted Nether to her home village. … to her family. Tears stung her eyes, she sobbed into the ground, defeated.
The Dark Lady lowered her hand and released her hold. Kayas crumpled to the ground, panting with the sudden release of the ropes. She was ordered to her feet, taken by a wrist and pressed into a tree. The back of one sword's sharpened tip came to rest in the hollow of her navel.
"The next time I see you it had better be the top of your head as you kneel that greets me, otherwise I will slit you," the tip of the sword swung upward, a hair's breath away from the shivering skin, "from naval to nose." The point stopped right between the little Druids luminous yellow eyes. "Make no mistake, if you continue or at any point in the future, reject my sovereignty then I promise these events will come to pass. Am I understood?"
Kayas nodded quickly, frightened tears still spilling form large eyes.
"Yes, what?"
"M-m-my Lady?"
The Banshee Queen smiled, "Good Druid; woof."
There would never need to be a single additional world of explanation: Kayas knew exactly why Jetadiah went out of his way to keep Corrosa out of this woman's hands. "M-my Lady?"
"Yes?" The sword was sheathed and her cloak drawn closer against the wind.
"The Priest, you see, is concerned…"
The hood upon her brow bobbed slightly as the Dark Lady knodded, "Ah, yes. Always so concerned for that one, he is. Drives every move he has made since my people first entered into war with the Scourge." There was a moment of memory that made the Forsaken Queen look almost like a person, then it was dissuaded, "She's in my keeping until her wounds are healed."
Kayas brow furrowed. Yes… she needs a healer. And obviously Jetadiah is not good enough… "What?"
A hard gray palm slammed her into the tree, firmly knocking the air from her lungs and stayed pressed between the hollow of her breast, "He hurt her… for you. He hurt her for you!" The Dark Lady reared back and slapped her hard enough to jar every bone in her body as well as send her tumbling away. A feral snarl overtook her ashen face as the Banshee Queen tried not to assault and kill her newest subject.
Kayas cowered, covering her head with her arms, glad at once that there was little sensation left in her skin though her flesh could feel the pain, "I'm sorry! Please-!" 'What did I do? I did not make him do it!' Panic zinged threw her. She shifted to her Dishu form and tried to run.
The Dark Lady laughed, both hands in the air this time, whispering ancient words of the kaldorie tongue. Only just in time to shift out of her swiftest form did she realize what it was. She felt a fool and knelt once more to hear the woman advance on her. The fallen High Elf had been a Ranger in life after all, easily able to control the animals around her.
But the Dark Lady had stopped and was silent. A long moment passed with no more sound than the scrunch of good leather as the undead woman knelt down.
The little Druid chanced a look… and found the Forsaken Queen, brows furrowed in grief, holding the tarnished necklace that had tumbled from her victim's bodice. Despite the gloom of the surroundings, the beautifully wrought piece refused to succumb. On one side a single cut emerald and on the reverse an inscription in the scrolling High Elfin script that read:
"To Sylvanas. Love always, Alleria." The Banshee Queen read the name as if her breath had been stolen from her lungs and never would return again. "Can it be? After all this time, I though it was lost forever!" Another moment of silence-
The hand closed over the locket, the Dark Lady's head snapped up, eyes blazing anger for the Druid. She stood and advanced – and Kayas scrambled to flee once more. "Oof." She slammed into the Dark Lady; having forgotten the woman had speed to put cheetahs to shame.
A cold hand clamped on her wrist and she was flung harshly to the ground. Staying down once more, she hoped a cowed position would lesson the Queen's rage.
"You think this is amusing? Where did you get this?"
"A ghoul," Kayas cried out, " a-a ghoul in the Ghost-"
The metal-clad boot clamped down on a wrist, pressing hard enough to make her lamb cry out. "You dare call my homelands by so foul a name as that?"
The little Druid was terrified, fearing at any second the Dark Lady would visit upon her the same pain as before. This time there would be no relief till she was truly dead. And when she was truly dead she would rise again as a mindless abomination of her former self. "Please." She begged, praying for an ounce of mercy from the enraged Queen. "Qu- Qual'thalas. A ghoul in Qual'thalas!"
"And pray tell what were you doing in Qual'thalas? Zul'aman dose not need a youngling who barely grasps the knowledge of a proper Druid." When there was no answer forthcoming from the shaking, sobbing elf at her feet she took the Druid by the neck, as she had done to the feline version, and held her upright till she stood on shaking bare feet. The grip readjusted around her throat, lose enough to allow speech, strong enough to leave a bruise. "Speak or by the Sunwell and all I hold sacred, you will never speak again!"
The cold metallic words sent shivers to the Druid's core. "W-we were passing threw. W-we was waiting for C-c- the Warlock; she was getting s-shards. I was killing the ghouls."
"Do you know what this says," the gray hand opened in front of her eyes and the scrolling script saw daylight.
Kayas looked at it then back to the Dark Lady, "I-it says Alleria-" The hand around her neck tightened, causing worse panic, "She's a hero of the Alliance! That's all I know-" lie #1 "-there is a statue in Stormwind more grand than the king's even. I was keeping it till I could find someone to give it to." Lie #2. "I don't know it was yours; I only know that name because it's written on the statue…" Lie #3 and 4. Kayas was in fact able to decipher enough of the High Elfin script to read it roughly. What else had she to do in a land full of their ruins and time to kill between lessons and hunting?
"She was my sister." The Dark Lady released her almost gently, still gazing at the pendent. The malefic glow of her eyes softening till the white ghost light of her banshee soul shown as bright.
Kayas hoped she did a decent job of feigned surprise, almost wishing that her own long ears could wilt as the Priest's did when he was off-guard. "If it was meant for you, then it is yours to keep." 'Please be nice to me, I brought your missing sister's necklace….'
The face that had been moved to grief a few moments ago once again hardened. "You think I long for a time before I was Queen of the Foraken?" The fist closed over the necklace once more and, with a swift turn of the waist, the golden locket went sailing threw the trees. "Allerian Windrunner is a long dead memory.*" Two plaguehounds followed the shimmer into the bushes, no doubt to fight over who gets to eat the shiney.
The Druid was released, and slid to the ground as a sigh shivered from hollow lungs. A hand went to rub the bruises left on her throat, noting at once how chilly her skin was and how hard her heart was beating.
"The Priest may let you run amuck thinking you might do an ounce of good, but I am not one for letting others waste energy being useless when there are useful things they might be doing – for me." She knelt down, back strait, still managing to tower over the smaller, younger elf. "You may kill as many plague hounds, bats, spiders and ghouls as you wish but the effort is useless. The plague draws them back up again after only a short while. Our wounds heal themselves in time."
The question 'then why don't you make an effort to find a cure for the plague instead of creating new strains?' almost escaped, but would have been the last thing she said. Instead she grinned slightly, "There are some things that can suck the life out of death."
"Oh?" the world was as much a normal tone of voice and sounding syllable as any Kayas had heard the Dark Lady speak.
"I don't think the plague at it's strongest could contend with Jetadiah and Corrosa at their weakest."
The Dark Lady scoffed, "Perhaps when you are able to control whatever it is that makes you Druids so hard to keep secrets from, you shall understand the full falsehood of that statement. They do not possess the cure."
"No," Kayas said, a feral smile on her lips, "They are the cure. Regenerate all you want, there's no coming back from a forty ton tree growing out of your face." She looked up to see the Queen tilt her head to the side, gloomy sunlight catching the color of her hair and bleaching it while.
The ashen face grew slack in surprise, the light purple markings showing for the first time, "By the Sunwell! They planted the trees? The dorie trees near the Inner Elfgates?" After a moment the former High Elf regained her composure and schooled her expressions.
"What? No!" Kayas got to her feet rather fast, now the one towering over the Dark Lady, who looked up at her from a slanted angle under the rim of her decorative hood. "I made the trees. Well, rather, I blessed the seeds. Well-I mean… the Priest and the Walrock… they were fighting and there was the ball of energy and when they wernt looking I found some seeds and then I planted them in some dead High Elves whince and… they grew."
The Dark Lady rolled her eyes, "By that I take it you mean to say," she cleared her throat and adopted a softer voice, like rolling thunder, " ' I'm a Druid and I bless and plant maaaagical seeds, because no one will suspect it was a Dru-"
The look the Dark Lady was giving the Druid as she shot swiftly to her feet drained all confidence from the other elf. Hopes that the woman would not hurt her as thanks for the trees swiftly took flight and soared away.
"It was you." The Forsaken woman accused, "You healed the sentinels? The poisons; you cured them?"
'I'm a dead Druid. Elune, here I come!' "Y-yes." Before the Dark Lady could strike her down she would give explanation. "They're my people; I could leave them to die! I had to help." Dropping to her knees, she offered both hands up in supplication, begging for mercy.
The Dark Lady just stood there staring at her: "By all the Gods on High…"
The little Druid waited for the blows to descend. When none were forthcoming she risked a glance up. Something bright hung right before her eyes that caused her to blink. She gasped to recognize the Moonwell water. She looked at the Dark Lady, not bothering to hide the fever in her eyes.
"Take it." When the Druid gingerly took the precious vial and clasped it around her collar once more the Dark Lady said, "Corrosa has explained how you need it more than I do and so I am inclined to see it returned to you."
The Druid honestly doubted she would be returning the vial if either one of the Forsaken women knew how she were capable of wielding it. If she were an evil being as her qual'dorie cousins were she would have done with the Priest and be on her merry way with the power in this vial. "Thank you, my Lady." The words were honest as the bow that followed.
The Dark Lady spoke softly now, as if to a confidant or friend, "That is payment for what you did in Qual'thalas. If you can do it again, I will make of you a Nigh Elf unrivaled in power and wealth."
"I… I am sorry, but I cannot. There are-there are no more seeds; the conditions under which they were created cannot be duplicated." In truth, she would not give the Queen more reasons to torment the Priest. Not because he deserved any loyalty but because, like him, she valued life and did not wish to cause others harm. He had been in such a personal hell at the time.
"What conditions might that be?" The military genius that was the former Ranger General's greatest asset came forth at once; "I have resources at my command you cannot imagine. Whatever the conditions were, I can recreate them. Or find someone who can."
The Druid was stumped. Tell her or no? "It's a Druid thing…?"
The Dark Lady gave a wicked grin, "Find someone it is!" She pointed a long and perfectly manicured purple stained nail at the Druid, "You, my precious Druid, are to go to Thunder Bluff and speak to Hanumal Runetotem. He is the strongest Druid on Azeroth** right now and can assist you with anything pertaining to natural magic."
"What? I can't go to Thunder Bluff; the Taurens will kill me on sight! And… and… besides that, the Priest wont leave without his precious Warlock!" 'See, I'm mocking him like you do! Lets be friends?'
"Yes, I suppose that is a problem." Reaching down, the Dark Lady snatched the stone from the Druid's belt. There was a glow of light between her palms that matched a glow taken over her eyes. Tossing the hearthstone back to the Druid, she spoke again, "This should make them listen to what you have to say. As for Jetadiah, Corrosa is still under care. She will be along as soon as the damage he caused is healed."
The words were strange, alien… guttural. And yet the Druid understood them perfectly, "Orcish?" How badly had he hurt the Warlock, Kayas wondered. And why did she get the feeling the damage was more than physical?
The Dark Lady smiled again, "You know how it works with languages I assume? Your stone will be able to translate for you as long as the other carries a stone also. Only leaders are granted this ability; on pain of death others are not allowed to do it and never lightly. Though I am not of the qual'dorie anymore, they are my people. I died defending Qual'thalas, and by all the Sunwell I will yet live to see it restored!"
The Dark Lady lifted up the Druid's full bag and flung it at her, face growing impassive again, "Be gone!"
Kayas shifted into her Dishu form and ran like hell was on her heels.
~*~End Notes~*~
* Quest: "The Lady's Necklace" This is my take on the Alliance version, if there was such. Players with the necklace who passed in front of UC (between UC and the Zeplin towers) would have Sylvanas come out and take the necklace from the player. A cut scene would play showing Alleria leaving Sylvanas behind as she went threw the Dark Portal. Sylvanas would then fling the necklace into the trees and /emote "forgetting that [player] is nearby as she turns back to her undead city." A few moments latter she would reappear and head off (running) in search of the necklace. Only the person performing the quest would be able to see her, and she would not be attackable.
** The strongest Druid is actually Malfurion Stormrage, though he lay in the Emerald Dream, so his essence is therefore not technically 'on Azeroth' anymore.