Sylvanas could not help but glance to one still form. As opposed to the rest, it had been carefully set upon a stone dais. The body seemed more mirage than solid, more of an illusion fading away. It radiated a white aura with bluish hints. In life, she had been a beloved elven female and her grace was still evident even in undeath. Sylvanas had found the other banshee to be wise and, in contrast to the demon, trusted counsel.
But Sharlindra had been the first to fall. More unsettling, when Sylvanas, upon being brought to the body, had leaned close, she had realized that Sharlindra was murmuring something.
She still was. They all were. All evidence suggested that they were, as the demon had early on suggested, dreaming.
“This is a trick!” Yet Sylvanas knew from her own bitter experience that such was not possible. “This is a trick, just like the mists hovering above the Undercity…” She turned from Sharlindra, turned from Varimathras. Her eyes blazed as she considered just who it was who would use such tactics.
Only one name came to mind and as she spoke it — even in a whisper — Sylvanas’s anger fueled her power and caused the very stone to shake. “Arthas…I would say this is the Lich King’s doing
…but that is no longer poss—”
With a gasp, Sharlindra suddenly opened her eyes. She stared up, seeing something that Sylvanas could not.
The stricken banshee smiled. She reached up a slim, ethereal hand. “Life…I live again…”
Her eyes closed. Her hand dropped. Again she murmured, though the words were not intelligible.
Sylvanas’s eyes burned with more rage. She leaned over the still form. “What twisted jest is this? She has impossible dreams of the even more impossible! She dreams of living? Madness!”
“Not so mad,” Varimathras remarked from behind her. “A simple spell, really.”
Sylvanas swung around, gaping at the demon’s unbelievable statement. Varimathras knew better than to mock her. He had learned quickly that his kind were not the only experts of torture.
“You tread a dangerous line…”
But the winged fiend only shrugged. “I only speak the truth.
Resurrection is a fairly easy casting for any dreadlord.”
“It’s impossible, you mean! I warned you—” Sylvanas’s rage surged. She focused on Varimathras.
Still unperturbed, he gestured. “Let me show you.”
An invisible force akin to all of the Undercity collapsing upon her sent Sylvanas to the floor. She instinctively went from solid to incorporeal, but nothing seemed to happen, for she still felt the harsh collision. Sylvanas briefly lost focus, but the cool, moist stone against her cheek stirred her back to full consciousness.
And then she realized that she should not have been able to feel those sensations to such depth. In fact, she had not felt this way sinceThe incessant smell of rot and decay filled her nostrils as it never had since the city’s founding. It was so intense that she coughed, an act that forced her to take a deep breath to calm herself.
Only…she did not need to breathe, either. She was dead.
Wasn’t she?
Sylvanas eyed her hand. The whiteness had given way to a very pale pink.
“No—” She gasped at the sound of her own voice…of her voice before her transformation into a banshee.
Varimathras loomed over her. The demon presented her with a large looking glass with gold scrollwork on the frame and handle.
“You see? I didn’t lie…this time.”
Sylvanas stared at herself, at her former, living, breathing self.
She touched her cheeks, her chin, her nose…
“I’m alive…”
“Yes, you are.” Varimathras snapped his taloned fingers.
The four undead high elves moved in and seized Sylvanas.
Their stench was terrible. Small black creatures crawled into and out of areas where the flesh had given way to bone. Sylvanas wanted to throw up and the very fact that she wanted to stunned her more.
She fought to pull herself together. She had been a commander of the high elves and she was now queen of the Forsaken. Glaring at the guards, Sylvanas ordered, “Release me!”
But they only clutched her tighter. Sylvanas peered into the monstrous eye sockets of one — and saw such hatred of her that she stood speechless.
“They might be a bit jealous,” Varimathras remarked, growing more shadowy again. “Really, they shouldn’t be. You won’t stay that way long.”
The high elf was caught between fear and regret. “It doesn’t last?”
“It would last, if we gave you the chance.”
The speaker was not the demon, but rather someone who had entered without Sylvanas’s knowledge. Yet though she could not see him from her angle, Sylvanas knew the voice so well…and shuddered because of it.
Varimathras had the guards turn her to face the newcomer.
To face a figure clad in black, icy armor.
To face the Lich King.
She fought to free herself, but the guards held her with the proverbial death grips. Worse, they dragged her toward the Lich King.
But this is impossible, Sylvanas remembered. He is defeated!
He is —
Arthas cupped her chin. His human traits could just be seen through the openings of the helmet. Frosty breath escaped him as he spoke.
“So becoming as a high elf…and so more becoming as a banshee…”
She was placed on a stone platform, then chained. Varimathras joined the Lich King, who again cupped the captive’s chin.
“This time…I’ll make you right,” Arthas promised. His cold breath coursed over Sylvanas’s face, but it was not the breath that chilled her so.
Arthas planned to make her a banshee again…
Sylvanas still recalled the horrible agonies her last lingering life force had suffered before her dread transformation. She knew that she would go through a terror a thousand times greater now.
“No!” she cried out, trying to use her powers. Unfortunately, those powers would not belong to her until the monstrous spell was completed.
Arthas raised his long, sleek sword, Frostmourne. Its evil was as great as his. He held the point over her and as he did, he and the weapon filled her frightened view.
“Yes, this time you’ll be a properly obedient servant, my dear Sylvanas…even if we have to raise you again and again and again to get it right…”
Sylvanas shrieked…
“She will not wake,” Sharlindra murmured, feeling in her a level of fear not experienced since just before her death. She eyed the other Forsaken around her and saw that they, too, were going through the same thing. “She mentions the traitor Varimathras, slain by her, and the Lich King, finally defeated! What sort of dream does she go through — and why does she dream?”
Nearly half of Sylvanas’s subjects were in a state like that of their queen. All but a few of the representatives of the other Horde races staying in the Undercity were likewise, though in their case that made more sense.
And worse, so much worse…the Forsaken were under attack.
Under attack by shadows of their own former loved ones, who had become something even more hideous than that which the once-living denizens of the Undercity now were. The Forsaken knew that they were not real, yet neither were they figments. What stalked the undead, what unnerved them as only their original demises had, were creatures somewhere in between. They ravaged the Undercity in a manner that served to bring home to the stunned Forsaken what it must have been like when the undead, as part of the Scourge, had overcome the once vibrant realm.
A shriek shook Sharlindra anew. This time it had not come from Sylvanas. This time it had come from directly above. She knew it for the cry of one of the other banshees, but it was no warning nor any weapon of battle.
It was a cry of fear…the fear of the unliving.
Sharlindra looked at those gathered with her. Frightening as they were to outsiders, the Forsaken now had a pathos about them that had nothing to do with their existence. Rather, those undead she studied looked uncertain, off balance.