For the final time, Sylvanas walked arm in arm with her mage down to the main deck before the entire crew. They had lined up all along the way towards the gangplank now laid out and properly secured. Proudmoore looked outright terrible but she held her head high and Sylvanas kept her pace adjusted to her out of respect just as much as concern.
”Captain Bonecarver and all the crew of the ’Banshees Wail’…” Sylvanas began. Yes, they had finally given the poor vessel a name, suggested by the captains daughter Haley after finally dropping the alternative ”Windrunner”, ”Tiderunner” or ”Seas Daughter”, because as she put it ”things only got interesting aboard after you started to Wail a little, banshee Lady”. Sylvanas hadn’t know what to answer to that but her mage had laughed for the first time in two dreary days and that settled it as far as she cared.
”…I salute your hard work and unquestionable skill. Let lesser nations be in awe of a ship whose maiden voyage consisted of crossing an ocean, and let Scourge and Scarlets look upon her prow with fear!”
And may they all tremble before the Daughter of the Sea. Sylvanas thought quietly as the crew cheered.
Each day had drained Proudmoore more and more, causing her to display all the symptoms she had previously alluded to. Still she would yield to neither wind nor rain nor exhaustion and her rebukes of the rangers’ suggestions that she should rest grew all testier until Velonara remarked that Proudmoore now sounded like the Dark Lady. When her mage had been ready to snap at that Sylvanas had run her clawed fingers down along her back, and that at least had seemed to make her mage relax quite a bit. It made Sylvanas feel marginally less bad for putting the woman through this.
Her rangers were largely relieved of guard duty during these day shifts of her mage, but they found all possible reasons to linger. Now that Proudmoore no longer needed to focus on directing the ship she could find cover from the increasingly cold wind behind them. While they had no warmth to share, the rangers would hold out their cloaks in a ring around and over their ward and form an improvised tent for her. Proudmoore did not snap at them any more after that.
”Captain Bones.” her mage saluted like Kul Tirans did.
”Navigator Proudmoore.” he returned it, grinning.
”Scrap that blasted forecastle.”
”Hey mage lady, when ya not falling asleep where ya stand you’ve gotta come back and race with me in the longboat! With me at the tiller and you doing your streamy current tricks we’re gonna own everyone!” Haley Bones exclaimed.
”Do I still get to be yer first mate, captain Haley?” Velonara asked as she threw the girl high in the air.
”Aye!”
Clea carried Proudmoores staff, oddly fitting as she was the one who had brought it aboard. Anya held a small sailcloth bag that contained the mages almost pitifully meagre luggage. Sylvanas had no idea where or how she had acquired the things but had little worry to spare on such trifles. When the rangers had asked her mage had just shrugged and remarked how mages, as everyone was aware of, were known to conjure all sorts of strange things out of thin air.
Sylvanas cast a last glance around the deck of the Banshees Wail. She was secretly starting to like the name.
Actually, that was always an option she supposed, but one glance at Proudmoore made her ashamed of even thinking about it. It was bad enough what she intended to do. But there was no putting it up any longer.
Her lack of enthusiasm for the art nothwithstanding, Sylvanas’ current form brimmed with necromantic energy and she was able to perform some limited yet highly useful feats of the dark arts, one being to Raise simple skeletons for a short period of time. She rarely practised it though, as it was invariably an inefficient use of her time and energy on or off the field of battle. She could move faster on her own if she needed and her bow and blades were infinitely more lethal than a few mindless puppets. Now however could have been a time to actually make use of that talent and call forth a mount for her mage, but Sylvanas decided to leave it for another time. She had one of her escort ranger squads out ahead to scout and going too fast would defeat that purpose. Besides that, a long walk towards the Undercity would be a convenient opportunity to have a very unpleasant talk with Proudmoore.
She also tried her best not to think too much about how a long walk would conveniently drain her mage’s energy even further to make her less able to escape.
As they passed out of the Lordaeron docks and into the countryside Sylvanas pondered how to broach the subject of Arthas. It was, after all, not her favourite one. In the event however Proudmoore beat her to it.
”What happened around here…?” she looked around at the ashen trees, leafless despite it being only early in the autumn.
”Blight. It has receded, but it has killed off everything that once grew or could have grown here. Every tree, every straw of grass, every seed waiting to grow. There are some areas not too far away that are still afflicted by it but as far as we can tell it takes some kind of actual Scourge presence to maintain the blight.”
”I saw the blight at work in Ashenvale when the demons were advancing. And earlier when…” At that Proudmoores voice trailed off.
They kept walking, with their escort of rangers spread out in a wide circle around them. It suited Sylvanas fine. She preferred not to have their eyes upon her right now.
The road between the docks and the city had been well travelled and shops, inns and some villages had sprung up close by. They were all ruins now, broken walls and soot-blackened beams sticking out at odd angles or sometimes forming a burned out skeleton of the barn or granary that had once stood there. Here and there the devastation was underlined by the presence of the odd intact object, an overturned wheelbarrow that lay where it had been left a year ago, or a clay cup dropped in the mud.
Proudmoore would stop to gaze at the bleak reminders of the kingdom that had once been, but did not speak about what she looked at. Not until they came upon a burnt out windmill, or perhaps it had been a granary, that appeared to have collapsed in on itself on one side as the fire consumed it.
”Lady Windrunner…what is that?” Proudmoore pointed at something among the rubble.
Sylvanas followed her direction and had no difficuly discerning what it was or reading the grim scene.
”Skeletons.” she said tonelessly.
Proudmoore looked in mute horror for a moment, and then rushed blindly through the dry, withering grass, hindered by her ill-fitting boots and too large clothes. Sylvanas had no trouble keeping pace with her.
Before them was a pile of burned beams and spars, and partly underneath them the charred remains of two humans.
Her mage had fallen to her knees before them, staring quietly at the blackened skulls and bones.
”A man, judging by the size” Sylvanas commented ”and a child. Perhaps his son or daughter seeking shelter with him in the granary when the Scourge found them?”
Prudmoore looked up at her, and she appeared paler than usual. The dark patches that had formed under her eyes during the last days stood out atrociously against the whiteness.
”That is how I interpret it.” Sylvanas continued, still with the even tone of a ranger delivering her report. ”It would have been a tall structure, reasonably defensible, and their pursuers set it on fire. Perhaps it collapsed upon them and trapped them here, perhaps they were succumbing to the smoke and the building toppled over them afterwards. Although…”
There was a small detail that had caught Sylvanas’ attention, a dent in one of the bones that seemed to have otherwise avoided the collapsing building.
”What is it?” Proudmoore almost whispered, her voice thick.
”This indenture here” Sylvanas pointed ”may be the mark of a weapon, which would suggest that whoever started the fire was waiting for them down here.”
”Did that…did it…?”
”Kill them? Possibly. Or perhaps he was only wounded and left to suffer and his child with him, maybe the child would not abandon its father and stayed to die from the smoke. It happens more often than you might think, like children hiding inside a closet as the building burns.”
It did actually look a little like the smaller skeleton was leaning over the larger one. Sylvanas furiusly fought down whatever small, foolish voice inside that tried to cry out that even a banshee queen was allowed to feel something before such a miserable sight.
Her last sentence had caused her mage to stare at Sylvanas in shock.
She nodded slowly.
”We were his slaves, Lady Proudmoore. Fettered by the Lich Kings will and incapable of even trying to resist his commands.”
”Were you…” her mage had to cough to find her voice. ”Were you…aware?”
”I do not know for sure about everyone but as for me and for the rest of the rangers yes, we were perfectly aware of what we were doing.”
She looks at me in horror now. Will she bolt, or lash out at me? I had better keep talking to keep her focusing on something else than panicking.
”It is not a subject we are keen to dwell upon, but the most formidable of the undead are always those that have enough of their mind, or perhaps their soul, left to function independently and put their innate skill and reaction to use. As a consequence the most intact and powerful among the Forsaken are invariably also the ones left with the most vivid memories of what they have done in the Lich Kings name.”
”What did he make you do?”
There is fear in her voice. She wants to know but dreads what she will hear all the same.
”Come, walk with me, Lady Proudmoore. There is still a long road ahead of us to the Undercity.”
Proudmoore followed her out from the dismal ruins and as they resumed their walk Sylvanas delved into her darkest moments as a banshee shackled to anothers will.
”When Arthas returned from Kalimdor with news of the Burning Legions defeat it was a surprise to the dreadlords who had until that point commanded the Scourge on the Legions behalf. They fled before him but Arthas’ first order as ’King Arthas’ of Lordaeron was to scour his grand realm of any remaining living inhabitants. He, I and his pet lich Kel’Thuzad each commanded separate forces to cut off the escape routes leading to the mountains and highlands around central Lordaeron. I commanded most of the dark rangers and banshees, Kel’Thuzad the available necromancers and Arthas the heaviest infantry, or what passes for that in the Scourge. I obeyed fully, writhing and screaming as much as I may in the small tortured corner of my mind that remined my own there was no way to resist the Lich Kings will. Not at that time.”
She could see her mage taking in the information, her revulsion not stopping her analytical mind from sorting, cataloguing and filing it away for later.
”Our designated sector was not here but what you have seen so far is representative. We set fire to every dwelling, tainted every well and despoiled every edible thing in our path. Me and my sisters killed all that moved without hesitation. Man, woman, old, young. I suppose we were allowed to do it quickly and efficiently this time, since the good king was too busy elsewhere to amuse himself with thinking up new exciting atrocities for us to debase ourselves with.” Sylvanas spat. ”A dark ranger would not have done what you saw back there. She would have set fire to the structure and killed both of them with a precise strike and moved on to track down their kin without wasting time.” She didn’t know if it was contempt or a tint of twisted pride lacing her voice.
Why is she quiet? Why doesn’t she condemn me as the monster I am? What are you waiting for, my mage?
”A banshee is not created to be allowed to rest, or be at peace. Our anger, our grief, our shame will burn inside us until it consumes every conscious thought and we lash out in muderous rage or a banshees Wail at whatever is near. Every moment of our existence is at some level an inner battle against that happening.”
Sylvanas hesitated for a moment.
”My rangers are well respected among the Forsaken for their deeds but have few friends and even fewer of them close. They keep to themselves, for…several reasons. Arthas used to enjoy placing those of us who were Raised as banshees with elven captives as a punishment for our defiance when he attacked Quel’Thalas. In our rage and distress at what we had become, and before we had learned how to keep it under control to the extent we do know, it rarely took long before we would Wail and kill our former people, on our own you might call it. I can still hear him laughing at me most days whenever I close my eyes.”
But that is not strictly true. Not anymore. Now I hear your heart beating at night and the breaths you draw and can think of nothing else. Now I see you reminding my rangers every day how they are not the monsters Arthas turned them into.
”Did you know it…what he was becoming?” Sylvanas asked lowly.
What a low blow. No, there are really no such rules in battle. But what an unworthy, ugly thing to say.
And Proudmoore did flinch. Confused? Affronted? Hurt?
”No, no...” She shook her head. ”That’s not why I left, I never thought he would…but I should have…”
She was trailing off. Sylvanas frowned. Proudmoore had left Arthas at some point? How and when and why the hell had she done that? She cursed her incomplete foreknowledge, it was clearly more fragmentary than she had hoped.
Nothing to do but push forward and hope to keep her reeling from sheer discomfort then.
”Would you care to clarify, Lady Proudmoore? You are not making much sense right now.” Sylvanas said brusquely.
”At Stratholme. When Arthas…when he ordered the city to be…purged… And I left to heed the prophets warning and gather the people for the expedition to Kalimdor.” Proudmoore frowned. ”You didn’t know about that?” she thought aloud as much as asked. ”What was you referring to, Lady Windrunner?”
In response, Sylvanas reached inside a pocket to procure the old marriage contract drafted for the crowns of Lordaeron and Kul Tiras.
What a strange document that is. It prompted the entire expedition to Theramoore in a way yet we have never talked about it until now, just as we have never properly talked about the night I brought her aboard. And if it hadn’t been for the dwarves being so thorough and, in all fariness, unintimidated by me we would most likely never had found it.
She let Proudmoore read through it in silence, watching for how her mage would react.
”It appears like you were quite close.” Sylvanas commented, doing her best to sound indifferent.
”We…we were…but not at this point. I think I know when this would have been written. Anyway… We were lovers once.”
She spoke it quietly, guiltily, as a confession of a serious crime. Which should have been perfect, and exactly what Sylvanas had aimed for, and all according to plan.
Should have.
”We met when I was travelling to Dalaran to begin my studies. We were just children them, nothing serious. But then he visited Dalaran and I visited Lordaeron and we became a couple. Lovers. A pair. Whatever you call it. We snuck away. Took walks. Had dinner. Rode through the countryside. …slept together.” she almost whispered.
Sylvanas wanted to recoil, perhaps not from Proudmoore as such but the thought of…
Why the hell is she telling me this? Wait. She is…confessing her crimes. She is so damned stubbornly honest that she would do that.
”I thought we would marry at that time, I suppose I even hoped we would, and Arthas did propose to me but then he broke off the engagement and I went back to studying and he to squiring for Sir Uther. I think that marriage contract would have been drafted around that time. Someones wishful thinking, maybe… Then, when the plague hit Lordaeron, Master Antonidas sent me to investigate and me and Arthas met up again.”
Proudmoore was looking down, not daring to meet her gaze.
Well, this is what the plan was, I should be celebrating really.
”I…I think some part of me hoped that we could pick up where we had left or something of the sort. I…you must think I’m very silly. Or…very horrible. At first things went well, we tracked the distributed infected grain and managed to halt the onslaught of that Cult of the Damned of Kel’Thuzad’s. But we were always too late, the grain had been shipped out. So when we marched to Stratholme, where that dreadlord in command of the undead was supposed to reside, we found the plague spreading and the people…they were becoming undead before our eyes.”
Her mage was trembling now, swallowing and curling into herself like if she didn’t deserve to take up any space in the world. It was pitiful.
Good. Almost there.
Sylvanas was sickened by the thought and by herself for thinking it. But it was true in more than one way. Timbered ruins were giving way to broken down stonework and the torn walls of the capital city were becoming visible behind a wooded hill where the road turned.
”What happened at Stratholme?”
”He…he ordered that the people infected, or believed to be infected, were to be killed. Culled, to save the rest. Like their lives did not matter on their own. I told him not to do it. He was angry with me, shocked I think, and kept insisting that there was no other way. I don’t know if he meant no other way to save the city or no other way to defeat the Scourge at work there amassing an army.”
Her mage was crying.
”I told him that I could not…could not…” Proudmoore sniffed, visibly trying to regain control of herself. ”Could not watch him do this.”
Something immediately fell into place in Sylvanas’ memory. The first night. Her mage had been plagued by nightmares, waking up to scream at one point, and thrashed in her sleep while she mumbled something that now became terribly clear.
”…can not watch you… …do th… …thas…”
I can not watch you do this, Arthas.
So you returned to Stratholme in your sleep that night and Belore knows how many others, my poor mage. And now I have dragged you back there yet another time.
”And that is when you left.” Sylvanas concluded.
”Yes.” Proudmoore whispered. ”I told Sir Uther about it and he confronted Arthas but he wouldn’t listen to anything. And Arthas sailed to Northrend to pursue that dreadlord and I returned to Dalaran to report what had happened to Master Antonidas and convince him that we should prepare for an expedition to Kalimdor as the prophet had predicted.”
Ahead of them, Sylvanas could see Kitala signing to her that it was clear to advance. She must have conferred with the scouts ahead. Sylvanas nodded at her. Her mage seemed to distressed to have noticed.
Just through the city now, and then I can let you be.
There had been a grand gatehouse flanked by solid towers guarding the northern gate. An almost whole arch was all that remained now.
”We used to walk here.” Proudmoore sounded hollow.
”Apparently so did he, or so I am told. As a death knight he always fought mounted on that skeletal horse of his, so the last time he walked here would have been when he returned from Northrend to murder his father and betray the entire kingdom to the Scourge.” Sylvanas mused.
”Terenas. He was…he was always kind to me. I think he would have been a good king. Patient.”
Somehow that incensed Sylvanas. A good king? Good enough to let his accursed son run rampant and good enough to let himself get killed and have that same son proceed to desecrate Quel’Thalas and…
No. Focus.
”What a pity his son shared so few of those admirable traits then.” Sylvanas sneered venomously. She could not help herself. It was Arthas’ fault that she was what she was, Arthas’ fault that she had to stand here and mistreat a woman infinitely better than him. She currently had no wish to hear a single positive word about the Menethil family.
Proudmoore curled into herself worse than ever and had her eyes so firmly fixed on Sylvanas’ feet one could be led to believe that those had suddenly been polymorphed into hooves.
”I wish he had never picked up that cursed sword…” she breathed, almost inaudible.
”Frostmourne.”
Even speaking the name made Sylvanas perpetually cold chest feel colder.
”You know about it?”
Sylvanas wanted to scream at her and laugh madly at the same time. She was seeing black at the edges of her vision. Her physical form was bleeding black smoke now, the banshee inside her fuming and boiling. In one furious motion Sylvanas grabbed hold of her upper body armour and pulled it down by the middle to expose the jagged, icily discoloured, and unendingly hated scar between her breasts.
”Trust me” the banshee queens voice crackled with power as she sneered through her clenched teeth ”I am well acquainted with it.”
Proudmoore stared, transfixed by Sylvanas’ chest. Under other circumstances that could have been associated with a profoundly different kind of reaction but now her eyes widened in shock as realisation dawned on her of just how personally the banshee queen had suffered at the hands of her former lover.
”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” She illogically clutched her mouth as she continued to apologise. ”I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry…”
It would seem Proudmoore had finally been broken.
I have reduced a good-hearted and courageous woman to a rambling wreck. A woman who toiled for weeks to get me here. And all in a days work. Good job, Sylvanas.
”Please forgive me I should have stopped him I should have done…”
Tears were running freely down her cheeks from clear blue eyes that never left the jagged wound over Sylvanas’ heart. Was that what she would be now in her mage’s eyes? Nothing but the scar tissue left by the cruelty of a petty and spiteful death knight?
I am not what you have made me, Arthas! I am not!
But the state of her mage in front of her told a different story.
Proudmoore was crying.
For Arthas’ sake.
Because of her.
Her mage.
Her Lady Proudmoore.
Her Jaina.
TO HELL WITH THIS!
”Lady Proudmoore.”
Her words elicited no response.
”Proudmoore!”
Did her lovely human ears even register a word Sylvanas was saying?
”Snap out of it!”
Sylvanas’ hand came down faster than the eye could see.
Re: [Warcraft Total War AAR] My Dread Lady
Reply With Quote
