~* Author's Notes *~
"In another life, I would make you stay
So I can say you're not the one who got away."
Katy Perry, The One Who Got Away
Wherever you are, Caspin Huzad.
~*~ Chapter 67 ~*~
The shades of anger in the undead Queen's face betrayed the many different kinds of peeves she planned to pick with her unruly elfin subjects. Kayas didn't move, intend on not having those purple tinted nails in her neck again. How the Priest managed to heal all the damage last time was probably a trade secret if ever there was one.
"You don't seem to understand your situation." the Banshee Queen purrs.
There was silence in the clearing for a long time before the Druid glanced a look at the angry Queen's eyes. She was looking at the Scout, a fact which boggled her mind. What does she want with him?
"You see," the Dark Lady said,"there's a deal at work here and you've broken it by attempting to run away." She took slow, easy steps forward. Long legs and elegant, ichor splattered boots snapped dead twigs as she came, allowing the sharp cracking sounds to repeatedly break the silence. The boy jumped with each loud crack! He stood, wide eyed as she approached. Admire her tenacity, he did, but the living always, always feared death.
Her shadow fell across his face.
Kayas lunged forward, putting herself halfway between the tall lady and the shaking boy. "What deal?" She didn't ask what the consequence was; she very well knew. What horror would await the Scout once he crawled out of his grave would be her fault. Even if she had not chosen to come here, she still held the responsibility as a Guardian-in-training.
The Scout was afraid, but had a pair of brass breasts(1) if ever a pair existed, "Serze-."
"Isn't here." She smiled all black lips and off-yellow teeth. One sword flicked out of it's sheath-
He switched tactics, "What about Mr. Meows?" If he though this would win him points he was wrong.
First there was silence, then the feeling of anger welling up like lava in a volcano. Then the explosion. "Don't you dare call my Mel'ody by so stupid a name as that, you vile, ill-bred aldoron spawn!" She'd have struck the boy if elves believed in corporal punishment for children who don't otherwise deserve to die. Even undead, some beliefs never changed.
The Druid winced. The Scout stood dumbly looking at the Dark Lady. Clearly he did not know how deeply he had just been insulted. Aldoron was the Highbourne word for those who forsook primal arcane or elemental magic in favor of natural magic. Amongst their own people they neutered and banished anyone who either wasn't gifted in magic, wasn't strong enough or attempted to abandon it. Rejecting magic meant rejecting the Quel'dorie culture, way of life and in truth rejected a part of their self. It meant you were no true elf.
All Kaldorei were aldoron to the Quel'dorei,
The Banshee Queen was an unstable level of enraged. Why something so simple as calling the feline by a different name mattered so much to her was unknown to the Druid. A tick, perhaps? She lifted a hand to swing the sword, end the life of the boy, but stopped herself midway. Some control came back before it was gone and she reached up to swing again. Her eyes blazed red, deeper and brighter than anything the little druid had ever seen.
She understood then: it was a trigger. Somehow, somewhere along the way the Dark Lady had been programmed to kill for a very specific thing. She knew about it too, was fighting it, but losing. The Banshee Queen said through clenched teeth, "I have half a mind to give you to the Scarlet marmots as a plaything!"
The druid hissed at him, making him jump to one side like she struck him herself. "Go, you idiot!" The Scout nearly tripped over himself running from the clearing. He glanced back once, seeing if the Druid was following. He found her standing there, a shield between he and the Dark Lady. The Queen would have to push her out of the way, possibly fight with her precious Druid, in order to pursue.
He vanished behind a line of trees and was gone.
Kayas reached up, touched her hand and brought the blade down upon her own shoulder. "Spare him, your majesty. Let him go back to his people. Let him be a true Kaldorei again. He deserves that much after all he's been through. He served you well today, fighting the Scourge."
"Absolutely not."
The druid was surprised. "You said the living and the undead shouldn't exist together. Isn't this-"
The Dark Lady's nostrils flared as she replaced the sword in it's scabbard, apparently regaining control as the red of her eyes dimmed to their usual glow. "Mel'ody needs a living being to be his companion. An elf – aldoron if they cannot be bonded – and so I acquired one for him."
"Acquired...?" Kayas turned to glance at the spot where he vanished, slowly coming to the conclusion. She remembered her dream about Serz and the hounds. Surely not!
"Yes. I won't bore you with the story," though she sounded as if she actually did want to share it. Druids did that to people sometimes. On second though she decided to share after all. "Mel'ody cannot and will not stay in a land of death. The living need the living. There was a book which Serz wrote which half-convinced me- oh, nevermind! I had Serz find me a feral child to be his companion. He knew of a Night Elf couple in Andorhal who had a child who went feral when the city fell. It took him weeks to track and trap the thing." Memories of not-so-happy times filtered through the Dark Lady's mind. "You should have seen him when he first got here. Killed one of my guards with nothing more than a stick she sharpened on his own teeth."
The bit with the stick did not surprise the Druid; he had shown as much survival skill over the course of the night's events. The boy belongs to the cat. I had it right the first time. How must it feel to be humanoid and belong to an animal? Did he even know Mel'ody was not his companion, but that he was the cat's companion?
"Let it not be said I am a wicked Queen. He has my cat and my bow and his life." She spit her tongue out, "I even sold Serz a house in Tarren Mill so that he might live somewhere not as yet corrupted by the Plague. He has a habit of killing Scarlets – he things the killed his parents but they didn't – and so I moved him somewhere where he might harass the Alliance instead. Generous of me, no?"
She stood there, perplexed. Why give him her bow? "I say you could have killed him, given me to the cat, kept your bow and burned down the house with Serz inside. I think that would have solved every single one of your problems."
The Dark Lady surprised her with a blink, a lightening of the redness in her eyes and a short laugh. "Ha! I see you have a sense of humor. Not to mention a small bit of intelligence left in your feline head." Her stance relaxed as if nothing in Tirisfal Glades posed any threat to someone so powerful.
"No," the Dark Lady went on, "I could not kill him. Serze – rather, Sean of Darrowshire!- is his father. There are... spider webs of checks and balances of power that even I am not immune to. Sean has friends in high places, to say the least and Serz does not belong to me at all. I've had enough of being threatened by crazy Warlocks for one morning, thank you."
Kayas said tentatively, "So you were never going to kill him. Just threaten him to keep him on his toes?" If she was not mistaken she just said Corrosa threatened her? She dearly would have loved to be some moss on that tree.
At the same time it also meant she and the Priest were out and about. After a week being the "guest" of the Scarlet Commander, she was very sure the collar didn't work anymore. Even if it still shocked her if she tried to remove it.
The Dark Lady stared her down, "Make no mistake that even he is expendable. Kaldorei will seek out and chase after others of their kind – as well you know – and up to this point I did manage to keep others of his kind away from my territories. But now...?" She motioned to the small druid, as if to blame her for being a semi-pubescent female of the same species, "It's only a matter of time before he tries to go. Mel'ody will require consoling after his tragic death, but it'll only be until I find a new companion for him."
Kayas was shocked. Only psychopaths talked about killing children so easily. "You can't kill him over something like that. How is it his fault he's draw to other Kaldorei?" Didn't you also admit that Serz owned him and Corrosa … owns?... Serze and … the web and everything? Perhaps the Dark Lady knew of a big enough hole in the web through which she could shove the Scout and perhaps make it look like an accident.
"Listen carefully: I don't care about him or you or Serz Huzad's connections as much as I care about Mel'ody. Why do you think the mark on his head is bigger than that lousy Warlock?" Kayas had no idea what she was talking about but listened still, "Anything that would hurt my companion by abandoning him – or spiriting him away from me – will be ended swiftly."
"What if... what if I made a deal with you?"
Interest piqued and the Dark Lady swayed a little in though, "I'm listening."
"You said... you said there was a deal where he had to stay here for Mel'ody. Obviously you didn't make that deal with him or he'd have known about it."
"True. I made it with Mr. Huzad. That man missed out on his calling as a con artist." The appraisal were sharp and nasty. The Warlock obviously go the better end of that deal.
"Then break the deal and make a new one with me."
Laughter. Derisive, sharp and loud laughter. "What on earth do you have that I want enough to give you my cat's pet?"
"My loyalty." Elegantly Kayas knelt on the ground in front of the Banshee Queen. One hand touched the ground, the other one her knee: submission but not property. "I promise that I'll serve you as my Queen if you spare Caspin and let him live in peace for the rest of his natural days. If and when such a time comes as Mel'ody needs a new companion then I will be the one to find a replacement and Caspin will be free to leave his service." How she planned to explain this once she got back home to Auberdin was anyone's guess. It did not take a brilliant person to realize she could not be Alliance and Horde at the same time and even those who tried usually stayed to one side or another of the line. She would never be neutral, never be able to fight alongside orcs for some greater good, when the greatest good that existed was fighting for the forests of Darkshore and keeping her homeland free from invasion.
"My dearest," there was a smile in her voice, "I though you'd never come to this conclusion yourself." The Banshee Queen lightly touched the top of the kneeling druid's head. "I accept. The deal is final when you put this on. It is soul-binding."
A piece of cloth found it's way into the kneeling druid's hands. It's black and gray and purple, embroidered heavily. Shaking it open Kayas found herself the proud new owner of an Undercity tabard. Hesitation gripped her. Magic wove into the tapestry of colors and designs like worms in an apple. Would they bind to her skin and make it so she could never remove it? Would they prevent her leaving Tirisfal Glades? Would they poison her and finish what the Banshee Queen's claws started? The space between her shoulders blades bunched at the memory of slamming into the cobblestones that night.
She pulled the Scarlet Campaign tabard off, carefully folded it and sat it aside. The new tabard slid over her head and once rested on her shoulders, activated magic which conformed it to her body. She slipped the belt off and replaced it over the hanging flaps. They came down to just above the knee. Long enough to make a statement but not get in the way of fighting, walking, riding or working.
"I had it specially made just for you. Don't you like it?"
The design elements were the same, roughly, but the images fitted it's bearer, telling her story instead of the Dark Lady's. The crying face was a Night Elf instead of a High Elf. The raven shield background was replaced by an enormous feline-bear hybrid paw print outlined in black and each claw point noted. The crossed arrows were removed, replaced by crossed druid staves; one for healing and one for fighting. Around the edge silver leaves of sentinel trees were embroidered, a hail to nature and a call to the forest of her homelands.
"It's... it's beautiful." she whispered. She meant it. Never had something evoked exactly what she felt upon waking that night when the Priest had given her the mirror. Her shattered sense of self had looked back from the mirror, warring with every though of what lay ahead and where she could go from that point on. "Thank you, Your Majesty. I'll … wear it with pride." She would too. Just because she was infected with the Plague did not mean she was not a Druid. Even the Dark Lady knew that; even the tabard she had commissioned for her displayed this fact. She was still Kaldorei, still a Druid of the Wild. Still a Guardian and still able to heal the land and others.
Something deep moved inside the Druid. A warm sensation like honey melting in the sun. What was it? After several moments the kneeling druid figured it out: acceptance. She finally accepted herself the way she was, not caring if she were infected and not caring if her people didn't want her back like she was. She would stay away of her own accord if it meant the possibility of spreading the Plague. It would be voluntary. Up to this point she understood that she may spend the rest of her days in seclusion while the rest of the world shunned her but not up till this point did she understand what it really meant when the Dark Lady said …
"I am Forsaken," Her luminous eyes looked up into the eyes of the woman who may be evil outright for what she did to her, but was by far not the most evil thing in existence.
The Banshee Queen nodded, slowly. "Yes, you are. I didn't realize that until I was driven out of Stormwind. The short end of that story is the realization that the Alliance are not as accepting of differences as the new Horde." She emphasized the word "new". The old Horde had attacked the Quel'dorei homeland, burned down the forest and killed a third of the population. Kaldorei children were well-versed in Orc history, especially when it came to their transgressions against nature. "But here," she gestured the land around her, a movement that somehow also took in her allegiance with the Warchief, "not only can we embrace who we are, but what we are. We have a place here." The Banshee Queen greatly admired the Warchief of the Horde, that was apparent.
"You trust the Horde? Don't you think they'll turn on you someday? They have demon blood in them."
"I trust Thrall with my life," so to speak, " but the rest of the Horde I wouldn't let borrow a copper without collateral." The Dark Lady sits elegantly in the grass, cross legged and somehow it takes her back to a youth spend amongst the green forests of Quel'thalas. She fusses with the bits of lose hair as she goes, pulling out tangles with her fingers.
"Do you know why the Forsaken say 'trust no one'?" When the Druid only sat back on her own heals the lesson continued, "Because trusting is how we became Forsaken to begin with." A darkness passed over her face, a face which was not so far into age when it stopped growing, changing. "Even Corrosa doesn't trust me." This bothered the undead Queen. On some level she must have convinced herself that she was so special that something like that fel-bound thing would graciously bow down to her.
"She trusts the Priest."
That only made the Dark Lady frown and pause in picking at her hair, "She'll find out soon enough why we also say 'beware the living'. There is no cure for the plague and yet he's got her convinced there is. No. She'll find out soon enough. The living and dead should not co-habitate." Some undercurrent of thoughts filtered through the statement; just another story the Druid did not know and no one seemed keen on filling her in.
~ End Notes ~
1). Female equivalent of "brass balls". This chapter is being told from the Druid's PoV and I assume Night Elf society is matriarchal for a variety of reasons, but amongst them the fact that the last two rules are women who have no "king equivalent" male mates and were apparently voted into the position.
2). When it scene was written the Night Elves could not be mages and were horrified by the very though that any of them might carry the Highbourne "disease" of affinity with arcane or elemental magic. Night Elves have their own damning word which describes anyone who is corrupted with arcane magic, which is just as insulting as aldoron.