The last echoes of the Lich Kings control were fading from Alinas thoughts as her etheral claws tore apart the throat of the last acolyte of the Cult of the Damned. Her misty form floated towards the grotesque wagon-like contraption they had guarded and her etheral arms tore off the lid off the iron coffin she knew contained the right body.
Her body.
I had begun a day or so ago with the mindless ghouls that guarded the small patrol. Their primitive and single minded bloodlust broke them free of their masters shaking powers absent thoughts of whether it could be a trick or a test, absent hesitation. The acolytes who were formally in command, by now very formally, ordered her to shoo them off with a Wail to take their fatal bickering tendencies somewhere else. Soon after the slow-witted by incomparably stronger abomination was sent away as well. Somehow the primitive humans seemed to think that her somewhat more intact mind would make her less of a danger. Did they expect her to harbour enough righteous fear of the Lich Kings wrath to keep herself in line? Did they confuse simple-mindedness with rebellious thoughts? Could their fanatical minds no longer distinguish between their own pathologial obedience and their slaves forced servitude to their hated master?
She would never know and would never care. The acolytes died as they had lived, ugly stains of blight upon the ugly and stained blighted ground.
The cruel humour of the Lich King and his despicable prince of a death knight manifested itself in the petty idea of assigning the banshees to guard the coffins of their own bodies, forever beyond reach as the unbreakable force of their masters will shackled them, forever near enough to be a constant reminder of what they had been and all that was denied them. Life. Afterlife. Rest. Freedom.
Still ever distrusted by the prince, Alina and other banshees were mostly dispersed around Lordaeron these days to hunt down whatever renegade remnants of Lordaerons human population that might be lingering in the cursed woods and highlands. To that end they had abominations with them to drag along the crude contraptions known as meat wagons that doubled as catapults and storage for whatever bodies they may collect to bring back to the necromancers in the capital and other strongholds, to be raised as new undead minions or thrown to the ghouls.
No longer.
Alina surged down and into her body. It was not like possessing a living creature, there was no soul to battle and destroy, no alien physiology to get used to. This was familiar, this was sliding into a well worn set of armour and coat, moulded to her shape from years of use. This was…her.
But she was empty.
The forest did not call to her. The power of the Sunwell did not sing in her blood. Those were the first things she noticed, as whatever fleeting hope she may have maintained of experiencing the opposite crumpled and died inside of her. She could hear the faint calls of what wretched birds still remained in the Lordaeron woods, but it was only sound now. No more, no less. She knew somehow that no bird or beast would ever trust her implicitly again. The trees were just obstacles now, with shade and darkness underneath. Darkness that did almost nothing to impede her vision now, she also noted.
Her skin was white as snow, still and lifeless like a statue. She raised her arm and flexed her hand. She could move, she could feel her fingers coming together to form a fist. It all felt…dull. Dampened. As if all her senses were muffled like sounds coming from behind a wall or from far away. She ran one of her nails across her arm. She felt it, but still hardly didn’t. She raised her arm to her mouth and bit down, her fangs almost breaking the skin. Yes, there was pain to be felt, but at the same time she did not feel it. She…registered pain but did not feel the fear and discomfort it would have brought earlier. When she had been…alive. Been…herself. Perhaps the most accurate way to describe it was that she simply did not care about the pain she now felt.
Honestly, what was left to care about? She was dead.
She was not a withered or rotting corpse though. Her body looked, in shape if not in colour, more or less like before as far as she could tell, and she reckoned she was at least as strong and enduring as in life. Probably more, without the need for breath or food or water to sustain her and with fewer vulnerable body parts she needed to depend on. Although, would she need to drink? A living body needed water, and lots of it, did a dead one need to keep itself from dehydrating? She guessed she would find out sooner or later.
Alina was aware of a presence of darkness and shadow just out of her vision, always behind her wherever she turned. She knew that it was part of her, like your hair blowing freely in the wind behind you was part of you. She reached back with her mind, something like as if her mind had been her arms, and pulled the shadow forward and around her like a cloak. Darkness boiled and bubbled around her, smoking and writhing like cool flames. She knew without trying that it would hide her in anything but strong sunlight. She could move inside it without being hindered but it took up a part of her concentration to keep herself wrapped in this flowing cloak.
That would have been interesting. For someone that cared.
She focused on her shadows again, but instead of pulling at them she let herself sink back into them. It was not a step back, more akin to letting yourself fall backwards into the water of a lake a dark night. Her shadows were cold and fleeting and weightless and so was she. She wanted to move forward and glided forward like a mist. Her eyesight was the same but her hearing had dulled and what little remained of her smell and, she would presume, taste was now gone.
Her banshee form.
She did not glide, but flew up, ever higher, into the pale light of the sun above the drying and withered treetops. The sun felt…wrong on her skin. Not burning her, but not warming her either. Not welcoming her like it would have when she was alive and thrived under it like all the high elves did. Belore had turned away from her. Or looked right through her. A banshee was a creature of the dark.
Alina lowered to the ground. She mentally took a step forward, out of the embrace of shadow and darkness, and took a step forward in her…physical form? Corporeal form? In her own body that she now possessed and inhabited but which hardly felt like herself in anymore. A heart that had not beat for almost a year. Necromantic energy that flowed through her veins instead of blood, or flowed through her body in veins and patterns of its own. Her tattered clothing was still on her, she had unconsciously brought it with her in her banshee form she realised. She willed her right leg to sink back into the shadows. It was hard to keep part of her corporeal and part of her not, it required a great deal of focus and balance. She raised her shadowy, smoking part that was her right leg out of her right boot, and then back inside and let it become corporeal again.
That…certainly opened up for some unconventional military tactics if nothing else. But Alina couldn’t summon anything but dulled indifference about her realisations.
There was a step behind her, a step intended to be heard.
”Alina.”
Alina turned around.
Tall, regal and very obviously dead, her former Ranger-General Sylvanas Windrunner stepped forward fully into her view without a second glance at the gory surroundings. Her eyes shone red like Alina suspected her own perhaps did as well now.
”I am pleased to see you too have freed yourself, Alina. Am I correct in assuming it is something that happened only recently?”
Alina would have raised an eyebrow in life. Now she only cast the slightest glance at the carnage around her which spoke for itself. Sylvanas did not display any surprise at either Alinas answer or her disinterested manner of answering.
”There are more of us, former Scourge who have reclaimed our own will. We are not many, but I suspect there are others to be found now as the cursed prince has departed these lands. I and some of our sisters tracked his movements towards the coast after I failed to end him. For that failure I must beg the forgiveness of all of you, for the second time. I had him on the ground with a poisoned arrow but his pet lich intervened when I wasted time gloating and Arthas escaped me and is sailing for Northrend as we speak. It is possible that the Lich Kings control over Lordaeron could have weakened further now with the greater distance to Frostmourne, or perhaps to Arthas himself…”
Memories flooded into Alina faster than what was left of her conscious self could even hope to keep up with and sort through in a controlled way. She was barely registering what Sylvanas was saying any more.
Arthas.
In a blink she was standing in Quel’Thalas with her ranger squad months ago and hearing the first reports of his undead army crossing the border.
In another she was back hearing the first report of rangers who were not coming back.
She was running, retreating from outposts that were going up in flames and undead monstrosities descrating her forest.
She was loosing arrows as fast as she ever had against gargoyles filling up the sky, wounded rangers hobbling ahead to join exhausted refugees fleeing towards the first gate.
She was crushed under the weight of a fallen gargoyle that dropped out of the sky and broke her leg.
She stared into the gaping maw and claws of the ghoul that jumped for her throat before all became pain and darkness.
She saw the welcoming warmth of a sunny forest far away as something cold and sinister held her back and pulled her away from it, back to a wretched existence of only slavery and grief.
She opened eyes that no longer had eyelids and looked into the leering face of the former prince of Lordaeron wielding the cursed blade that now had chained her to the Lich Kings will.
She watched powerless as the undead she was now part of tore apart her capitol of Silvermoon.
She struggled in vain, unable to resist the command to give chase to the fleeing families making for the harbour where no ships were left afloat, or the outer gates that had already fallen to the undead.
She tried to shout to them to hide and get away from her, but all that came out was a banshees Wail that caused all who heard it to fall to the ground in agony, those closest never to rise again.
She heard the mocking laughter of Arthas echoing through her mind no matter how loud the cries of terror from her people grew. Her former people.
Alina fell to the ground and felt herself slippin into her banshee form, shadows flickering and smoking like flames around her, and she let out an ear piercing Wail. She Wailed and Wailed until her drained spirit could manage no more and she fell down into her corporeal form again, absent-mindedly noting that it was apparently the easier one to maintain when her focus or anger ran out.
Alinas legs gave out but Sylvanas was there and caught her and Alina collapsed into her arms. She spoke in a strange language that Alina knew without thinking was called Gutterspeak and that she understood without even trying.
”You are not alone anymore, Dark Ranger.”
[Warcraft Total War AAR] My Dread Lady
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