Heresy

A lot of people from back when know that the original reason I made Heresy (besides wanting an undead rogue) was that I had always planned to make a book about her. In such, I've started trying to combine her stories into something that reads more fluently. Here, early stories about her have been combined with other bits and pieces. It is long, but its meant to be part of a larger work at this point, so bear that in mind should you choose to read it. This follows her rape and murder by Vishas; it is her earliest memories and time as an undead and basically, how she came to be named Heresy and not Andro, and why she abandoned Lordaeron.

Its still not perfect, I made quite a few changes from the original text on my old blog, and probably will make more.

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The last thing I remember....pain. Blinding, stabbing pain, and numbing cold, hitting me all at once as my body succumbed to the magic that had forced its way through my limbs. Garalyll was already dead at my side, the noble cat's fur shredded and matted with blood. He had done his best and served me so very well only to meet such an end....bleak sadness filled my head but tears would not come, the pain overwhelmed all my senses and dominated them to the expulsion of anything else. To feel so alive at a point of death was extraordinarily ironic. Once, I tried to rise, but it was impossible - the feeling was already leaving my feet, my legs...there was not much time left now.

I managed only to turn my head to the other side of wherever this was - this dark, damp room where I had fallen. Where were my weapons? Where were my friends? Where....I could not think now, it was so difficult. It was cold, and I was so tired. I was left with nothing but questions, and aware of nothing but the growing stench of death in my head. A vague feeling of helplessness fed the smallest core of anger in my heart, but it was not enough to recall a doomed soul. Mortality was to be mine and I could not do a damned thing about it. The room grew darker, and that was the end of what I knew, of a life as a living human, as a Ma'lanth huntress.


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I could not see it, but I could feel it, its weak warmth slowly moving across my face. The dull, grey light had cast itself gently through a stone doorway, feebly illuminating the floor. I raised my head slightly to meet it, but could see nothing.

Hoarsely, I croaked "So this is it, is it? Not exactly what I expected", but it was barely a whisper; my throat felt like the dusts of Tanaris had raked it to shreds, as if hundreds of years had passed since I had last spoken. I let my head fall back on the cool stones beneath me. They suddently felt good; comforting me somehow.

What was going on? Where was I?

I blinked again, and pushed myself up by the elbows. Still nothing but the utter blackness, but my hearing was sharp and intact.

Ca-Click. The unmistakable sound of bones moving slowly together. My bones.

It was then that I really knew.....horrified, I reached to my face and felt relief as my fingers encountered skin - cold, but intact. I felt my mouth, my nose, and reached slowly upward.

My eyes were gone. What remained instead was nothing...holes where my eyes should be, and the horrifying sensation of air and light hitting flesh that was meant to feel neither. My body was falling away, but not in the honourable course of death. It was leaving me in layers, sundering both sanity and pride as it made its way across its own decomposition. But I could feel it, I felt alive and conscious....how was it possible?

"The Scourge???? NO!!!!!!"

I screamed until I felt my vocal cords tearing. I screamed as I felt my skin harden and pull away from itself. I screamed until I sank back into oblivion. Let me die...let me die...please, by what twisted means have we been wrought to be left to this.....

"Even death has forsaken me!!!!"

I remember that sentence. What I never could have imagined was the irony of the word.. forsaken..

After I awoke once again from the horror that was my consciousness during the transition, I felt weak, but I rolled to my side. The sensation was one I would never forget....it was as if I could feel nothing, but my mind compelled my long-dead body to its will.

I felt out blindly around me, feeling the dank and musty stones about me, smelling their green wetness, and the vague sweet, sick smell of my own death, long faded to a whisper.

I sat quietly for a moment, and let my hands travel over my body, bizarrely calm, and methodical, as a gnome engineer would his precious inventory...

I think I must have been so much in shock as to hardly react to what was dawning on me....I appeared half-complete, curves of cold flesh meeting raw bone, as if I was half-eaten by the starving wolves of Felwood, chased away before their task had completed. Now...I felt gratitude for my lack of sight, instead of horror....what more was I lucky enough to not see?

My clothing in tatters, I managed to stand and reach out around me. I realised early on that my hearing was acute; the slightest change in the air around me, and I knew how close I was to walls, or doors. With this small blessing, I made my way to the steps.

I could feel the faint light on my face, filtering slowly and sluggishly down the tomb like liquid sky. I gingerly made my way forward - for my legs felt like stakes of wood, commanded by sheer will - before a voice interrupted me, and beckoned me into a world I had never known: the world of Deathknell. I was later to learn this voice belonged to "Mordo", but I never saw him again.

Suffice it to say, I was a lost soul, confused, hearing every sound around me, the soft flapping of a bat's wings, the distant bark of a wolf. I could hear the cracked and varied rumblings of what I could only assume were others around me. I lost myself momentarily....and for a moment, blind hope overcame everything else. I think that was when I realised I had possession of my true senses and memories.
I called into the damp woods.....shouting as best as my coarsened and cracked lips would allow.

"Veti...Ko'gu! Dear Sihmm! Its Andro! I am here!"

It did not occur to me that if they were alive, what they would think of the horrible, brutalised sight before them.

I paused, to listen.

There was no response, no change. The bats flew, the wolves bayed, the distant scratchings of bones...it was if I had never said a word.

It is said when you are blind, that the other senses rush to compensate; where sight is lost, sound and scent fill the mind. This seemed to be true; for the subtler scents of spider's webs and misty grasses lingered among the more overwhelming and obvious ones, of death and decay, of rotting wood and stinking misery, for even memories have scents.

But there are other senses - of the mind - that step forward too, should you allow them.

"Intuition reigns only when reason sets it free", Sihmm had once said to me. I'd not understood at the time; but intution told me then they were lost - I was lost - and whatever lie ahead at this point was not for me to control or question.

I felt my body relax a moment. I could not fear what I did not know. And if I tried to make it known, intuition would fail me. I had to relent, I had to absorb, at least for now, until I knew what was really happening.

The wind picked up slightly, I felt it caress my face, and horribly, chill the sockets where once, green eyes would have shown me this new world.

No more - I sniffed the air, turning my head, tilting it, struggling to hear everything.

He..this..whatever he was, gently but forcibly led me to the one who would explain the tale....where I then eventually met the one who began my dark and purposeful tutelage: David Trias.
In the first days of my time in Deathknell, I must confess to a certain degree of confusion at what had happened, and my role in these new surroundings..in truth, it was a haze of activity, of explanations and trials unlike anything I had experienced before.

I had always hunted; it was this skill for which I was newly recruited, only this time I was to commence the hunt as the beast - and not the hunter. At first this concept made little sense to me....I had grown so used to Garalyll being my front line of attack, intimidating and stunning his prey so handily, that I would leave him to finish off our prey while I mined a bit of thorium, or stalked a second target. Now I was the first line of attack, and it was rather disconcerting. Used to my longswords, the daggers felt light - almost silly - in my hands, and the chainmail which once hung heavily and coldly from my frame was replaced by lighter leather....it seemed wrong to me, but I was in no condition to question my teachers....I still walked in a state of shock, taking in the sights around me, fed a steady stream of thistle tea and strange, salty meat which I ate greedily, but never once questioned.

Young warlocks, not dissimilar to ones I had known in the living, came about with their imps, dancing and chattering at their sides. Although I could not see this myself, already they sported bright colours, and their hushed whisperings made me wonder if they were not some breed apart from this strange race into which I had arrived. Mages practiced their fireballs - I could hear the exposions in the distance - priests of this new religion perfected their cures, and warriors forged their skills for battle, but we all were similar in that we were shredded and semi-whole remains of former humans, and we were being trained for something, and I knew not what.

I had learned enough to know by now that we were not, in fact, the Scourge; but an entirely new race of undead, saved from that plague by the Dark Lady, Sylvanas Windrunner. The name sounded familiar to me for some reason, I recall even then, but I pushed it aside...I think some small core of self-preservation had already formed in my heart then, and I held my tounge to try to take in as much information as I could. I was only sure of two things in this new world..one, I was expected to kill...and two, I was starting to enjoy it in a way I had never before felt. I actually felt bliss.

We - that is to say the young blade-trained among us - lived in a broken remnant of a human home, and spent most waking hours working feverishly to improve our skills. We slept on bare floors and lived simply; we were told at length what wondrous luck had befallen us, and pushed beyond our previous day's limits. By the end of the first few weeks, we were young killers, pure in motive, clear in direction and seemingly needing for nothing. It almost felt good, and memories of my tiger and my friends...seemed a long way away.

"Drink the tea, young one. Eat the flesh."

I will never forget the first time I actually heard something I recognised...Scarlets! Speaking in the distance, in this land! Vile, righteous scum that they were, they plagued even this surreal and unfamiliar place...

"Kill them now, young one. Think now what they did to you then, and what they would do to you still...think of the Inquisitor at your throat...what did you do? What sin have you committed? Tell me your secrets...."

In my blindness, they - I say 'they' because to this day I do not know who they were...they had little scent, and the voices were not familiar to me - would whisper these things to me, and run a single bony finger along the back of my neck, the cold hard nail tracing a line in my remaining flesh before stepping away. The panic would flood back...Vishas's vile fingers at my throat, smiling down at me like some sick animal, a silken voice with a poisoned tounge, and eyes of madness..

The memories released, I ran foward blindly and towards the smell of living human flesh, stealthed and unseen. It was nothing like killing as a human...I could smell their surprise, their terror, their fury...and finally their blood, warm and salty on the damp forest air. I could smell the metal of my small dirks, warmed from their strikes against the bones, the smell of uniforms, even of their water and cheeses...I cannot tell you how different this is than to face the eye of your enemy, to see his face meet yours in battle...

Bliss.
It was some weeks later than my arrival in Deathknell that some of us were collected and told we would be leaving this place, and going to a nearby town called Brill. This much I do remember, dear reader; but bear with me, because by now my mind was somewhat not my own; and as such, the details of this story will be only as concise as I can recall them.

I remember only heading vaguely North, stopping along the way to speak to some great lumbering beast, his fleshy figure a preternatural white, who bade us to collect some herbs for him for his master. We continued along our way - for there was to be no loss of time in our journey. We did not stop again until I heard a voice of one of the men say we were to assassinate farmers who had been seen nearby and recover their harvest.

The memory training had worked exceptionally well. The scent of humans, forever associated with the fingers of the Inquisitor, now filled me with a black wrath, coupled with a vague terror. They would hunt and torture us all, as surely as Vishas had enjoyed his 'time' with me. Fleshy, living hands came to symbolise my destruction; it mattered not their owner.

Do you know - the only cut I remember making was the first one? After that..I recall nothing of any significance other than the sound of our boots walking in the blood-soaked field.

Some time later, we arrived in Brill.

Had she seen it, the human part of me would have once almost liked this strange little town, compact and yet complete, full of shambling creatures, muttering apothecaries and a dilapidated, yet somehow quite lovely old graveyard. But I was not human; one town was much the next, a place to buy, a place to sell, to accept assignments and fulfill them as per the wishes of those who would have me advance in this cause. There really only one event of circumstance that I recall in that time there; and if it had not happened, perhaps the continuing descent into this bleak and unquestioning world would have simply continued.

We had completed the assassination of Scarlets not far from the imposing ruins of Lordaeron when the sound of rushing hoofbeats and shouting took us off guard. My first reaction as a young Deathknell fighter may have foolishly been to rush towards it, blades swinging in madness....but part of a rogue's true skill is the skill of forethought, and another is of patience - the hoofbeats told me that they would be mounted, and thus far beyond my current capability. I stealthed quietly behind a tree and sniffed the air, trying to get some sense of who they were, and their number.

I heard voices speaking to each other...some in human tounge, and others with elvish accent. And although I found their voices almost impossible to understand now, I discerned that they were not headed for Brill, but the Scarlet Monastery, to slay Archanist Doan, Vishas, and others within the compound. "Scarlet" is a word I would know in nearly any language, for it burns through me like molten rock each time that I hear it.

One of the voices....

....Veti! But this cannot be!

In a single, horrible moment, every waking memory of my life came back to me. My life, my death, in a millisecond of searing white thought.

The rogue's voice was rough yet soothing; as dark and as quiet as ever. I could not understand the conversation, but if it was Veti, surely all hope was not lost.

In this moment I felt something burst alive in me, a consciousness, a realisation, an awareness if you will, of myself, and the life, and undeath, around me.

I ran towards the riders and immediately the familiar smell of warm nightsaber and living human flesh nearby exploded in my nostrils.
And just as fast - the memory training - my own, corrupted emotions slammed into my mind like a studded shield.

Hurt you. Kill them.

Stunned, I slowed my pace and eventually stopped, my small blades in my hands, unstealthed and unprotected. I sensed that only a small expanse remained between the mounted riders and myself...torn between the raw and shambling internal command to destroy them - as if I could - and the shocking reminder of a happier past.

It was then that one female human spoke and I could feel the air change as she swung her horse to face me. I could hear the shifting of saddles as others followed and turned to look at what stood before them.

...and then it happened.

A laugh, more laughter. They pointed. I heard one dismount - a female, and most likely a warrior by the sound of her armour - and she sniffed me.

Sniffed! As an animal! The outrage, the humiliation! Hate and a deep sorrow settled on me like dust. How dare she! A beasthunter, a Ma'lanth! Honourable and noble!

How could they not know? I wanted to show them, to remind them who I was, but when I tried to speak, only gutteral and choking sounds came out, uttered by my dry and raspy voice. Had they even understood this tounge I now spoke, it is doubtful that they would have believed the words.

In a brief, horrible moment, it dawned on me - with a sudden horror, I remembered my own demise, and my own low state. I was no hunter, I was no living woman with blood-filled curves and laughing eyes. I was a corpse, honed for someone else's use, my worn and beaten body recycled for their purposes, blind, grotesque and.......no match for them....

I was as good as defeated if they tried to attack me, but they seemed more interested in laughing and shaming me than killing me; they rode on to the North, in a wave of dust and chaos. I was left standing by the road, listening to them leave.

They went to kill those who had done such ill by me, and yet I felt shimmering rage...resentment....humiliation..anger..regret... confusion...pain....

I feel! I am no mindless killer! But their arrogance! Their mindless disregard!

I cannot go back, there is no yesterday for me now.

I looked up and saw the ruins of Lordaeron in the distance, and slowly made my way to the Undercity.
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Plaguetouched
The elves and humans had long since passed as I made my way into the corridors of the massive, yet crumbling structures of old Lordaeron.

I heard a warlock pass, mounted on a flaming steed, the blue glow of his Voidwalker swiftly flying at his side. Something made sense about the self-preserving and vicious relentlessness of the warlock; I had come to admire and loathe them, fear them even as I envied them - some new and darker part of me understood it well. I had even come to take some sensory pleasure in their presence. Have you ever smelled the true essence of a warlock? Sweet and thick, deadly is the fel scent. Delicious even, but as seductive as it may be, it is also poisonous....
However - I had never been so near one before, while mounted; I had never smelt or touched a felsteed.

Oh...
Hate, such hate...

The felsteed's misery - the deepest despair, but without a voice, as a beast has none - was palpable, I smelled it radiate off of him, mingled with the lick of flames, his shimmering brown coat, his animal sweat. His very motions felt agonised, out of his command. He was a beast in the control and service of others. Some years later, I came to recall this sentence with some irony....and to this day I am still wary of the warlocks. Garlyll had served me in his own way, in a frostsaber's free will, which is really just an agreement...broken if either of us fail to keep up our end of the bargain. I cared and fed for him, and he killed for me. This was the way I knew, and that I understood...magic had played no part in our partnership.

I entered the lift, guarded by lumbering, hulking beasts, that smelled of...oh, reader I could not describe this to you.....living death...dust and wet stench, for they never saw the light of day, I was later to learn.

The lift lowered quickly, and before I knew it, had opened on the world of the Undercity.

The sounds...perpetual wailing, odd breaths of wind on the air, like even the air had died here and was a ghost, making her way through the passages and vendor's stands. Sluggish, fetid sewers flowed through the city, and everywhere I could hear the soft clicks of bones meeting the cold stones as the citizens moved about their business.

I knew not where to go....it seemed I moved in circles, and I could not read the signs...but I recognised the scent of thistle tea, faint and lingering, and began to follow it, hoping that this would lead me to a trainer, or perhaps another rogue, who could direct me.

I heard footsteps draw near me and decided to inquire.

"What would you ask of the dead?"

The voice was at once annoyed and sorrowful, and if not out of necessity, I would have regretted asking. He smelled smoky, and old....not unpleasant, but merely very stagnant.

"I am come as a rogue, citizen, and know not where to attend my trainer."

A bony hand placed itself upon my back..and I recoiled.

"No!!!"

My first reaction....as I never had physical contact with anyone, save the memory trainers, who used their touch to control and condition us..and the kill, of course...

"I do not harm you, young rogue, I merely direct you. Your memory training is over, for the time being. Your trainer is there..ah...look you must let me lead you. Are you one of the blind ones?"

"I am."

"Follow me. Should you wish it, our engineer will show you how to construct something for your sight...it is not perfect....but it will provide you the means for basic vision."

I follwed his scent and sound over what I think was a bridge....I am not sure, but there were several steps both up and down.

"You are here." I felt his hand grip my shoudler slightly, then release it. "Carolyn.....this is your new protegee...I will return to my rounds."

I heard his feet move away gradually, and stood in blackness, awaiting the response. The voice female...gravelly and coarse, but nevertheless, she had been a woman once.

"Rogue, I am Carolyn Ward. For this time you will be entrusted to my care and training. You are to report to me regularly for the maintenance and development of your skills, and you will be expected to pay for this service. I trust you have money enough to prepare yourself for battle, as you will need to be equipped properly in order to advance further. Do you have anything you wish to ask me now?"

I shook my head, and kneeled.

"No, trainer. I am ready to begin in your service."
I had been in the Undercity for...1, maybe 2 years? Time passes oddly here, a sluggish, fluid dance of day and night, meaningless and neverending when you are no longer alive. It just ceases to matter to you, and you are kept busy and focused on the tasks for which you are assigned.

I had begun working on a trade...engineering, which although several were open to me, I chose for its practicality. Being so often a solo fighter, the myriad toys and tools available to me were very helpful: bombs and grenades and target dummies as well as a few trinkets that were useful to others. It was also a turning point as I learned to make goggles for myself, that allowed me, although in a somewhat hazy fashion, to see for the first time since my undeath commenced.

Carolyn had introduced me to Franklin Lloyd, one of the engineers, and I began an apprenticeship of sorts with him. When the first pair of goggles were completed, I was afraid to put them on.

"Well, rogue....what delays you?"

"I....I do not know what I am going to see."

His dark and dusty laugh rang out through the stony enclave.

"You will see the glorious city of the Forsaken! You will see your own kind, and know your true path!"

He actually dropped to his knees; I heard them hit the pavement, and I assume it was in some pleading and supplicant gesture to the Dark Lady.

I wanted to feel that.....but all I felt was a silence at my core, dead, cold, meaningless. I am what I am, and nothing more....I put on the goggles.

Forsaken. The Undercity.

Immediately a world known only to me by its scent, and the resonant sounds echoing through its halls burst to a life, of sorts...but the shock of seeing the undead, even being one, made an impact. Even knowing my own condition, I had never been able to see it, only feel it - this was a completely new level of understanding.

Carolyn had begun broadening my training a good deal; I had learned rogue skills which allowed me all manner of escape and battle tactics, but I was soon to realise that as an assassination rogue, it would be of critical importance that I not only got the first strike, but that I was as agile as possible, and well-skilled in critical blows to the opponent. At first, the lure of being completely trained in that particular method was alluring, but she insisted that I consider the importance of subtlety and conservation of my energy and resources. My training had been progressing well enough that I had ventured out as far as The Sepulcher, and begun making things difficult for the fighters and wizards in Ambermill. It was at one time there that I saw two young trolls, fighting their way through the outer flanks of the Dalaran humans. I knew little about the trolls; only that they were deft weavers of magic, with an ancient history, and that they were to be regarded as fighting for our side, for the time being.

The male, a mage, threw his spells as if he was writing music - his magic seemed controlled and well-paced, and although the fight was difficult, he easily would have won it had it not been for the intervention of another....the female, a hunter, seemed at ease, sending the beast in for the kill against the wizards. I felt pleased to watch the humans fall, to sense this other and alien race fighting the same humans as I had recently done myself.

Suddenly I had a sense of another, more powerful presence nearby. I could smell smoke, and the rich dusty scent of velvets and satins, and hear the slightest swish of a sleeve....I stealthed just in time.

Human mage! So high in her level, that I could not discern her abilities. What did she need with this place?

The trolls had not seen her, and I was some distance away, although I came in stealthed as rapidly as I could. What chance did either of us have? My only option was if, by some miracle, I could sap her unresisted, and we get away in enough haste to reach past her casting range. It was a chance so slim as to be suicidal, but the trolls were, as I understood, our allies, and they deserved any aid I could offer.

I...was not fast enough. Frozen like winter waterfalls, the young trolls were to fall before my eyes, and the human actually danced upon the still corpse of the male.

So young they were! No match for you, human! Dishonourable wretch! How can you take glory in such a meaningless defeat?

I was starting to hate my old kind with a venom, even as I remembered my own past.

The trolls, who were of some age younger than I, never saw her coming. From behind, with his own fight already having occupied and drained him, the little mage was slain in a flash of fire and light...if it was even this long. I saw his broad back burst, and smelled the blood fly out of him - with such force that I could hear it splatter nearby trees at some distance. As the flames shot through him, his arms outreached in shock and with the force of the blast, he fell to the ground, lifeless. The female was not far behind, her beast falling silent as he was slain, and her cry of anguish at her companion's death fluidly merging into one of her own physical torment. It was all over so quickly....

I shall never forget this, as long as I live. I had only come up against foes who were of equal strength to my own; it would never occur to me what one so much higher could do. The human must be stopped!

I flew back to Undercity, and raced back through the corridors to the rogue quarter as quickly as I could. Hoarsely, I shouted...

"Carolyn!!"

She turned her head to me slowly.

"Do not shout, rogue. It does not become you. What is it you require of me now?"

"There has been a human mage in Ambermill....quite advanced in skill. I have seen him killing the weaker ones."

At this, Carolyn's bones creaked and she almost became upright.

"Well! Speak rogue, who have we lost? Do we need to send the recussitators?"

"I fear it is too late, the trolls were quite young, trainer."

I bowed my head slightly.

"Troll?"

She burst out in peals of laughter at this, a hollow, wracked sound that made the dark and mouldy quarter feel even colder.

"Yes....trolls....there were... two, trainer."

I was confused by her mirth, her sudden bursts of laughter. She placed a bony hand on my shoulder, trying to speak between her gasps.

"We will....not trouble our recussitators or priests to rescue a silly adolescent trolls in Ambermill! They should know their place!"

"Trainer, it is my understanding..forgive me..that the legions of the Horde fight along side us? Should we not come to their aid?"

At this, she became quite stern.

"Listen to me, young rogue, and know this. We fight with the Horde because it suits the Dark Lady's purposes to do so. We will NOT trouble ourselves because one unwise young junglethumper decides to stray from his familiar lands! Do you understand! Do I make myself clear?"

I stood before her, troubled, confused, and slightly afraid. I had not yet fully understood our 'arrangement' with the Horde, this was perfectly clear.

"Yes, trainer...but I do not see how.."

"SILENCE!"

Her vehemence turned the heads of the others nearby. Her voice dropped immediately to a hushed and urgent whisper.

"Young heretic - for this is what I think I shall call you - you must be more wise with your musings. I do think upon you with some fondness, for your skills are coming along well, and I think you will be a fine protogee in some years ahead. To be a female rogue.."

..at this, I felt her swell slightly with pride..

"..is a privilege few are lucky enough to share in the Undercity. Do not squander it with your philosophical and selfish mutterings! Do you not thank the Dark Lady for her gifts to you? The humans laugh at you now!! The elves would slay you! You are Forsaken, child, do not forget this! You are loyal to us first, and the Horde second!!"

"Yes, trainer."

Despondent, and yet desperate to please her, this being, this only kind of family I seemed to have now... I saluted and quietly walked away.

I took the goggles back off - to have my sight back on the first day and see the trolls' demise was quite enough for one day. Blindness was bliss, the kill is pure, and untainted by emotions when I cannot see their faces.

In this black and blissful retreat, I found myself walking the corridors for some time, listening to the menacing pace of the Deathstalkers, the instruction of the summoners, the chattering imps of the warlocks. I did not pay much attention to direction, but merely wandered, trying to find a center, trying to find out what I had not understood before.

I found myself walking down stairs when the stench of blood and the sudden, soft gasps of pain and anguish overtook me. A male voice, well-spoken and confident, greeted me among the sensory overload. The familiar scent of embalming chemicals, herbs and resins led me to realise I had stumbled upon one of the apothecaries.

"Young rogue....there is no business for you here. What brings you to our laboratory?"

"I....my apologies, Apothecary, in my wandering I have come to here by some error. I shall immediately leave, of course, my most humble apologies."

I started to slink back into the hallway when he beckoned me to come through the door.

"Stay, stay rogue and see the glorious cause we work for even now....! Are you blind, young one? Put on your goggles and enjoy all that is before you....see the future in this very room."

I obeyed.
An alien female - I was later to understand she was a tauren - stood nearby, silent, wobbling and mumbling incoherently. She glowed a sickly and preternatural green; shadows crossed her eyes and she seemed unaware of me. Explanation as to her presence was not offered; and I did not ask. I had assumed only that she was ill and somehow was here for treatment.

"Keever!"

Faranell barked the word and gestured to another figure, whose back was turned to me. The creaking voice responded.

"Keever hears you, Master Faranell. Keever attends you."

"Show our young Forsaken here the majesty and true beauty of our cause! The perfection and precision of it all.."

A huge, rumbling mass of flesh on a nearby table howled in agony, writhing on his back, and straining against the restraining table. As he did so, I saw his spine flopping loosely out from the putrid and stinking flesh of his back beneath him. Manacles gripped what would be his wrists and ankles, straining and choked by the force of his upheaval.

The rattling voice of the assistant tore my gaze away from the abomination.

"Keever will show her, Master."

I heard Faranell chuckle slightly as Keever stepped forward, his face permently scarred and shredded; perhaps the most tortured face on a Forsaken I have ever seen up until that moment. His face appeared a mixture of childish innocence and pure, cold emptiness....a mind controlled, empty, hollow, the voice of the void.

"Come with Keever."

I followed him wordlessly, anxious and so hungry to leave, into a side room to witness something I would never forget..the cages.

Since my time as an undead, I was all too keenly aware of my growing hatred of humans; controlled as I now know I was by the manipulation of the memory of my rape and torture, I had only become more enraged by the treatment I witnessed after my undeath; the inhumanity of man, their arrogance, and cruelty, even as I had once been human. But even that....did not fully prepare me for what I saw in the chamber that evening.

As long as I posess the faculties to think, I shall never forget the moment when I first encountered those cages. Tall, jagged metal walls, as sharp as razors, encrusted with rotting and shredded flesh and bone; blackened with the sluggish, flowing blood of countless deceased held human and dwarf figures, naked or nearly so, shivering and cowering within each enclosure. A woman cried, piteously, oblivious to anything around her...a dwarf sat on the ground, feet outstretched, mumbling to himself, rocking back and forth slightly. The stench nearly drove me to my knees; but fear prevented me from showing anything but absolute calm. I was in the belly of the beast, I felt; the machinations of death and plague all around me. The truth was here, the most dark oblivion being crafted before me.

Keever bade me to sit, and knelt himself before the cage in the far corner, reaching through the metal grid to pull a human man's head back to him by the throat. I saw him slip a liquid down his neck only moments before agonising wails broke from the humans' mouth, the most awful...wrenching...sounds..I know how death sounds. Death is quick, and sharp..and sweet.

This man would not die. It was, by far, a more sinister sound in knowing this.

His flesh twitched and writhed across his body as if it had a life of its own before I saw the sudden flash of light, and where he had once lay, there was instead a rabbit. The woman in the cell with him panicked and fell backwards, her flesh ripped on the steel bars; as I saw her turn, blood ran profusely down her hips and legs, as she turned away, crying and mumbling on her knees.

"Keever is unhappy with this....."

I watched Keever hold the rabbit in the air and again force the drops into its small mouth. Again, the living creature morphed, so awfully, through its human form and into that of a sheep. I could not believe..even in the barbarity of what I had lived and committed before this night..what I witnessed through the faint green haze of my goggles.

I had been kneeling, partly to keep my balance but partly in horror when the sound of voices behind us brought me back to my feet.

"Yes, let us leave them here. We will process them presently...KEEVER! Come here!"

I turned slowly, with Keever, as we made our way back out of the side chamber to the main room....and froze.

So colourful...so vibrant...his beautiful sea-green hair was matted and twisted, his strong young face nearly unrecognisable. Muscular limbs, bent so unnaturally, and his torso blasted nearly through from the force of the fireball. And she...violet toned, with ebony hair and small tusks...her leg torn away....pale in death, the trolls were still beautiful to her.

And they had been so young...so very young...no match for the human mage....

"They are here, oh..I am so glad...it was not right to leave them to die...not right..now they can be sent back to their families..."

I spoke without thinking. Faranell's voice was the lowest chuckle, soft and black, like a hissing snake behind me.

I felt his hand touch my neck and I stiffened in terror, waiting for the memory training to take my mind again.

"Send them back?"

His chuckle became the most...mindless cackle...

"Oh, I agree it is not right to leave them to die! A waste indeed! We can put them to good use! KEEVER! You idiot, attend to this matter now! We waste nothing in the name of the Forsaken! We will feed on the world of the living.....to create the world of the dead!"

Keever shuffled forward with a large slim blade, so sharp that its edge seemed to fade into the air, and knelt on the ground before the male troll. I was hardly aware of Faranell's hands gripping my shoulders, and holding me fast....forcing me to see this all unfold, the horror of what slowly dawned upon me.

A lumbering abomination entered the room with a huge metal trough in his hands, and stood dutifully next to Keever as the flaying began. The blade slipped through the layers of the trolls' young flesh as easily as a fish through water; layers falling away, being thrown into the trough with a sickening 'thwap'....troll becomes...carcass....

I began to wobble. My sight was fading. Still Faranell held me fast and hissed in my ear.

"Know, Heresy....for you are as we are...and you have tasted them as others will do now....to survive...to destroy...the living are foolish! They deserve nothing..."

"no..." It was the only word I could utter.

Keever muttered to himself as the troll's kneecap pulled away with the flesh of his thigh, and began picking at it with the blade.

My world crashed around me....my mind went darker, the horror, this was not right, they were Horde....they helped us....our cause was good, wasn't it? Weren't they among us?

I had..eaten them?

"NO....!!!!!!!!!"

I strained against Faranell in vain, thrashing, reaching for my daggers as the sound of footsteps entered the room behind me. The voice was not familiar.

"She is lost. Do it now. I will not listen to this noise one more moment, Faranell, lest you suffer the same fate I suggest you end this circus. KEEVER!"

The sound of fingers snapping.

"...prepare her."

Faranell held me fast as Keever walked to me, the blade in his hand. He wrenched my head down and forward and I remember..the pain as I felt the bloodied knife slice my neck open at the back...the searing heat of the drops....the numbing....cold...blackness........slip down....I am the rogue...hurt you...down...noooo stop stop!.....Vishas...down...Veti! Sihmm! Winterspring.....I am the hunter! the dark Ma'Lanth!....I am what I am......

down...to........nothing.

*************

A rat chittered, his small voice echoing along the stone walls, a small duet with the sound of fetid and glowing sewage flowing from the city. A lone shape lay face down in the pool. Her neck scarred and stitched roughly, her hair wet and plastered to her shoulders, she does not move. Her arm floats slightly, bobbing gently in time to the small ripples on the surface.

A lone male figure stands nearby, watching her in silence for a moment before he sighs, and turns away.

*************

I could feel the weight of the rat on my elbow, tugging at what little remained of my sleeve. I awoke...my first instinct to leap and defend, I tried to stand..to reach for my blades..

Gone..

Stumbling, I splash down again, down into the fetid and poisonous waste to which I have been cast.

I want to die, but the gods continue to put me back here.

Who am I?

The name floats forward into my consciousness.

The heretic. Heresy. I am Heresy.

Memories float back slowly at first, then accelerate, forcing their way back into my mind, the trolls..the apothecary..the..

I throw up violently, before I crawl to the edge of the pool.

Sunlight streams down the sewer chamber; the pale, desperate sunlight of Tirisfal Glades; sunlight that never really believes itself.

"The same sun shines on the Horde today", I think, through the haze.

I pull myself to the stone walls and grip them feebly, until I can crawl.

My neck aches....throbbing, pulsing, I feel the plague within me....the taste of the future, it crawls through my marrow like a spider, waiting to feed on me when I am weak enough to let it.

The sunlight.

The darkness.

Future.

Oblivion.

I lift my head, and begin the long, slow journey away from this place, away from the Forsaken, away from...everything I have become, and seen. Everything I have been forced to be.

I do not know what to expect when the zeppelin pulls up.

A troll stands next to me, sniffing me and laughing. I cannot blame her, soaked, poisoned and rotting, I stand in shuddering silence, avoiding all contact. I cannot be angry at her...she cannot know what I have seen.

But I will spend my life...in the service of their race for what I have unknowingly taken part in; for their young I would have unwittingly eaten as my strength.

I will serve no master but my conscience.

It is my choice.

It is my free will, come what may.

The zeppelin leaves, and in agonisingly majestic slowness, turns - and makes its way to Orgrimmar.

__________________
"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg

Heresy

((made a lot of edits after original posting as I realised some illustrated stuff out of of the original blog version didnt' copy properly - sorry if you've read it and wondered what the hell was going on with the apothecary bit :P its fixed now))

__________________
"I wrote the story myself. It's about a girl who lost her reputation and never missed it." - Mae West
Fireflower's Words of Wisdom: http://i200.photobucket.com/albums/a...ompilation.jpg