~*~ Chapter 33 ~*~
There were people talking as the little Druid awoke. Hushed voices from people who noticed her movements retreated further away that she not pick up what they were saying. She, however, was kaldorie and her hearing was far better than theirs.
"… no one noticed he was gone till they were gathering up the dead and he wasn't amongst them. Two of the dead rose up as Scourge though, and had to be killed again."
"Perhaps we can make a trade? The Warlock-" the woman who owned this voice was busy doing other things, her angle making it hard to hear her at points.
"The Scourge Queen cares little for that one. He's as civilian as they come!" This young man was brash, a know-it-all.
"The cat then-"
"The cat won't leave the Warlock. You've seen that yourself!"
"Perhaps," Kayas said straining to sit up under so many heavy blankets, "You should let the Warlock go and the cat will follow." It had to be Mr. Meows and Serz they spoke of; Serz being the only undead who had a cat big enough to scare a grown woman and man.
The dimly lit room was made of stone in Human fashion. The spread on the bed, the top spread to be precise, was red and cream and a bit faded. The subsequent layers were animal hide and smelled richly of kaldorie textiles.
"Where am I?" the Druid asked rubbing the sleep out of her face.
"A Scarlet enclave in Tirisfal(1)."
The Druid sat bolt upright in a panic, "A what?" Her mind raced, picturing people in red and black breaking the door down and running her threw with Holy enchanted spears for being a bearer of the Plague.
"Fear not, kaldorie, you are safe here." The woman, white haired and having an aged bearing smiled at her and brought over a bowl of steaming something. Her light purple and pink medics robes were stylish for a time period before the Scourge invaded Lordaeron.
The Druid scooted back in the bed, readying herself to attack if need be. No way she was eating anything these Scarlet Crazies gave her – not after she'd seen them in action! The way they had fought the Dark Lady, so organized it was amazing, so strong it was breathtaking to behold, had scared her with the power unleashed across that clearing in Tirisfal. It would bear the scars of the encounter for years to come.
"I'd rather like to be going." The Druid tried to smile as she made to slip out of the bed.
The woman stepped in the way. "The Commander would have a word with you, if you please." Though her tone was polite and her smile was visible, there was an air of no-choice about her words.
Irked that this little old lady was going to try and boss around a Druid of the Wild Kayas slipped out of the bed and stood to tower a head and a half over the lady. "I think I'll decline and be on my way." The weight of the collar was apparent around her neck, as was the soreness from the shocks indicating it had been tamped with while she recovered.
"You've had a hard few days, please sit and eat." This smile was more genuine. The woman meant her no harm, was just a peon placed here to convince the Druid to cooperate, as she held out the bowl of soup.
The druid shook her head, hair flipping around her shoulders as she did – someone had combed it out – "I want to see the Warlock."
The woman's smile faltered, "Um… I'm not sure we can accommodate that request." The nervous laugh went strait to the Druid's core and flicked a feral switch.
"I suggest," she hissed in that intimidating way all of her kind were capable of communicating when trying to get a point across, "that you reconsider." Furry paws thumped on the floor as she shifted into her feline form and growled low at the lady. Not a sound, but a vibration that was so much more terrifying.
Stepping back suddenly the woman exclaimed, "Oh my word!" set the bowl down and left quickly. In the corner by the fire the young man had been watching wordlessly. Now he paled and sat motionless still. His fight or flight didn't exist; he was a rabbit that hoped the predator didn't see it at all.
Kayas paid him not mind and went to test the door. Inches from the knob she felt the surge of arcane power that would prevent her from opening it. Flustered she turned to the man, upright once again, and said, "Your going to let me out now."
No sooner had she seen the man blanch and stammer to a stand than the door opened and the Commander barged in, healing woman on his heels and followed by two armed guards in red and black. One was a woman, whisps of gray-brown hair escaped out from under her old steel helm. The Druid wouldn't have made note of her but that she smelled faintly of the smoke of engineering experiments gone wrong. A smell the Druid was all too familiar with by now.
The Commander looked her up and down in one sweep, taking in her leather skirt and matching top, hearthstone belt with it's small pockets sewn in and the sin'dorie collar around her neck from which the moonwell vial hung. He cursed under his breath, "You're were a pretty thing, despite what she did to you. I saw it for a second before you changed back, after you damned that boy." He spoke of her in the past tense, as if she wore a different face now.
He went over to the table and sat, leaving the guards by the door. Taking off the red helm and sitting it on the table, he ran a rough gloved hand over the stubble of his cheeks and chin. Well into his middle years the scars of the war were evident in one white eye and across that side of his face. Whether the nail marks had been human or animal was unknown, but it was obvious he had languished before they had been seen too.
Kayas remained standing, considering taking out the guards and making for an escape. If the mage who enchanted the door wasn't well seasoned, and she cant imagine how good they would be in a place like this, then she may be able to just force it open. The Commander's words slid threw her like beads threw silk. Nice and pretty, she supposed, but ultimately useless.
The saying was as old as written language, but never in her years had she ever found use of it. "You can't butter a starving girl with beads and silk, especially if they are a lie. Let me go."
The man's eyebrows rose in scorn, "You said you were a lady and yet you refuse my food and my hospitality, threaten my staff and call me a liar. Can you see why we mistrust the Forsaken? You say one thing and do another."
The Druid kept her tempter in check though her eyebrows drew downward in rising anger, "I am kaldorie, or is it that you are such a whelp as to have never seen one of my kind before?"
One gray eye studied her solemnly for several moments, thinking. "That witch doesn't care if you're a Night Elf or a Blood Elf or a High Elf. You're all fair game to her. Which makes you fair game to me."
Hints of fear rose in the Druid's stomach. Four versus one were bad odds. If he attacked her there was little chance she would win and escape. "Is that what you tell yourself when you look a sentient little girl in the eyes and take her life? That she was fair game? Do you think the Light cares if you though she was fair game?" She had almost spoken the name of her own Goddess, but figured that would not get her point across as aptly. "Murder is murder."
The Commander's gray eye grew darker, "Speak to me of murder? You? She killed that boy and you brought him back to life for her to kill again."
"No." Of that she was certain. The Dark Lady was a scheming woman but not a fool.
"Think she'll keep him alive?" He mocked her open hopefulness, "Think she's going to offer a trade?"
"Yes."
He laughed suddenly, "You are such a child. I can see it." He studied her again, this time taking in details of her body and being. "She doesn't care about children though; they make smaller and faster versions of the adults and just as expendable."
The Druid glared at him. Cold as the Banshee Queen was she had made sure the children had been safe, taking up two at a time to escape the Scarlets and silencing the casters who would have killed the third.
"She sends them after the women, to bring more into her fold. No doubt in that stinking sewer of hers there is a woman waking up who was once our allie and will now serve her. She wont have a choice and neither will you when the Banshee Queen gets ready to lose you on the living."
"No."
Frowning he sat back, crossing arm across a mail-clad chest, "Why not? How could you resist?"
Suddenly the Druid understood. There were no shades of gray. It was either Forsaken or not-Forsaken, it was either Scourge or not-Scourge. "Make no mistake, Scarlet Commander, I see no difference between the Scourge and the Forsaken, only in which they follow. But I do not belong to the Dark Lady, "she just about choked on the word 'belong', "I have a different owner, one who would not see me be used as a tool for destruction." I hope I'm not wrong about that…
Though ears seemed to be listening it seemed as if no one in the room heard a thing. "And what about the boy's fate?" The Commander asked, dismissing her statements as if it were so much smoke in his face.
"I care not. He was your responsibility and you are the one who failed him." Her conscious called her a bold-faced liar; she very much cared what happened to the man, though she wouldn't allow her failure to purge the Plague from his system to haunt her forever. Amongst the kaldorie one was responsible for the people under their command and no one else, even if someone who tries to help them fails.
When trying to get a rise out of her did not work the Commander switched tactics, "I've had word that the she-witch Corrosa has attacked the Scarlet Monestary, our most holy sanctuary. Do you know anything about this?"
"Just as you say, that she was there."
The Commander kicked out a chair with a thick booted foot, "Sit. Tell me what you know."
She remained standing, "That she was there. Nothing else." She judged the distance between herself and the door again, wondering once more if escape would be possible.
"How did you come by this information?"
"The Dark Lady said she sent her there." The two guards looked alert enough. Maybe if she shifted into a bear and knocked the one down and then into a cat and mangled the other a few times she could wound them enough to get the door open…
"Why would she tell you when you claim you are not one of her people?"
The trap snapped close. Oh crap. "I decline to answer on the grounds that I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't and at least if you kill me you'll destroy my body so I don't turn for good." I wont get that grace out of the Dark Lady now.
The Scarlet Commander moved so much faster than the little Druid though possible. One instant in the chair and the next having her by the wrist and pulling her threw the door. As soon as the spell-locked door opened the sounds of screaming and moaning rushed threw born on a current of infection and decay.
Putting a hand over her nose the frightened Druid tried not to go out the door but the man held her firmly and pulled as one who was very used to things writhing in his grasp. She knew what it was the moment the sounds and smells had hit her. Two weeks she had spent in the Plaguelands, fighting Scourge and Trolls and plagued animals and feral Humans.
The nightmares she had, dreams so vivid they were still in her mind even as she woke to the smell of the damp death and the taste of the flesh-ash, had been so frequent and crippling that the Priest had acquired a drought for her so she might sleep a few hours of peaceful dreamless sleep each night. She had taken it gratefully, though it's effect was not as long-lasting as either of them had hoped.
Outside was a horror scene the likes of which Kayas had never imagined in all her life, but had been present in every nightmare every night of her two weeks in the Plaguelands. A torture ground. There were men and women on racks, in cages, over fires and on spikes. Chains hung threw the air suspending the dead and dying from trees, under the waters of the pond and piles of dead bodies were stacked for burning… some of them still moved, though alive or undead was unknown.
All of it in a field surrounded by high walls of white and red the tortured went on and on. Men in Priest's robes, women in scarlet reds and even a couple of the children screaming as they were consumed in fire. Torturers with knives and pokers and pliers bent to their work doing whatever their warped and sordid minds could come with to extract any ounce of information from the living and undead alike.
Kayas doubled over and threw up in the dirt, the feel of so many lives and un-lives smashing into her senses all at once, making the budding Druid in here scream in panic. Her stomach heaved again and again but nothing more came up after the first round.
The Scarlet Commander pulled her closer, so close he could surely smell the acid of her breath, "You'll answer my questions or, by the Light, you're going to find out just how long the kaldorie survive in the care of a High Inquisitor."
~*~ End Notes ~*~
(1). Pre-Cata there was only one Scarlet Stronghold in Tirisfal, but now there are two. I've added the post-Cata stronghold into this story since I think it was ret-conned in and was always suppose to be there. If not then the Forsaken are losing ground to the Scarlet and either way this works for the story.
(2) Missing note. I made a note here and when I came back to double check it was properly placed in the story I could not find it.