Chapter Text
The priests waited at the northern edge of Misthalin, just a few days' travel north of the city of Varrock. Hurorsh shuddered, clutching his linen robes about him. The chill air would be welcome any other time, but the air still smelled of smoke. Crops had been burned, trees felled. About him, there was the devastation of war. They stood in a forest of burned trunks. It was no different than the ruins of Forinthry, which had in the times of legends been hailed as a promised land of prosperity.
Forinthry was a name that was steadily fading to legend, though. It was a wilderness, now, vast and threatening, and nothing grew there, even several hundred years after its devastation. Only monsters dwelled there, driven by human expansion. They still attempted to cross South into Misthalin, but the kingdom had walls, guards, and strength to protect their civilians.
The thoughts turned sour, however, as he watched the devastation, blinked painfully as the wind tossed up ashes into his eyes.
“This is an evil task,” Dreya whispered, her right hand clutching a weapon. Her left had been rendered a stump in the recent battle, but she’d insisted on coming. “We should go. He will not have entertained our missive. I think he will even have sent things to slay us.”
“If he has, then he has,” Boreck nodded, his white beard braided down to his waist, tucked in a gilded sash. “This is a mission of some importance. Zemouregal nearly destroyed Varrock with his undead legions. Certainly, we have Arrav’s shield, but we’re missing Arrav himself amongst the fallen. All it would take is one clever plan, and we would fall into destruction’s grasp.”
Dreya shook her head. “You can’t trust a being like that. You think any of this negotiation will cause him to change his course? He’s a snake!”
“And yet,” Boreck breathed softly, “Was it not Saradomin who made this bargain, yet refused to honor its terms? Perhaps, even in evil, there might be some vestige of honor. Perhaps.”
“Blasphemy,” Dreya hissed, but she did nothing, shifting from foot to foot like a skittish mare.
Hurorsh turned from his companions, who were now silent, and looked down at the small marble casket. It wasn’t entirely stone; the lid itself had a panel of glass inserted, allowing the contents to be seen. Several impressions were carved in the edges of the rim, small circles to allow for the inserting of runestones.
Inside, there was an inhuman baby. Hurorsh didn’t know if it was a male or female, but its skin was a pale blue, and it had horns and odd-colored hair, a gem on its forehead, and odd markings on its face. Those in this war who had been unfortunate enough to meet Zemouregal, yet fortunate enough to survive the encounter, had reported similarities.
“We shouldn’t return it,” Dreya said, following his gaze to the child, “It’ll only grow to aid him, to come back and slaughter us. If we wish to do anything with it, we should raise it ourselves, as our own weapon.”
“It is a baby,” Boreck whispered. “What father would not ruin a nation for the chance to be reunited with his child?”
Dreya snorted, but went silent again. The daylight faded, and Hororsh began to silently agree with Dreya. If Zemouregal allegedly cared so much for this child, why wasn’t he here in a timely manner? Perhaps waiting several hundred years for its return had made him doubtful that the baby even existed anymore.
Of course. Zemouregal would be anticipating a trap. He might not even make an appearance at all. This show of good faith… it was likely too late.
Boreck screamed as, from behind a tree, undead hands snatched him. Dreya spun, pointing her blade at the creature, but it did not kill the old man. Not yet.
A man… a creature half again his own size, emerged from the air, from a warping of deep violet light. Hurorsh would have assumed that he was a giant, had he not met giantkind before and seen what pitiful creatures they were. The man before them had ashen skin with a youthful tint to it, almost, and robes that any human king would marvel for their intricate design. Still, the sickly colors of the designs, the shadows and the hues, none of his aesthetic at all made Hurorsh think for a moment that this beast was a benevolent king. He was a necromancer, and he ruled the dead.
“Tell me,” he said softly, his voice deep, sonorous, “Why I shouldn’t kill you all and take my child. Why should I barter with you?”
Boreck gave a low whimper of pain, his arms twisted behind him. Dreya began to chant a prayer. It sounded weak, and the undead thrall didn’t even twitch. Her voice broke, she licked her lips, then addressed… the thrall? “Arrav,” she pled, “Arrav, see reason. See the light once more. Return to us. Return to me.” The creature was stone, and Hurorsh was horrified to recognize him now that Dreya had drawn his attention to the man. The undead monster holding to Borek was their hero, his corpse become a weapon for this monster.
Hurorsh stepped forward, knowing that only calm reason would get them through this. “It is because the baby has been kept in stasis, in a frozen form of life, the spell cast by Saradomin himself. The means to undo such a spell is known only by us three. We wish to barter for the safety-”
“Then,” Zemouregal smiled softly, lifting an interrupting finger, “I certainly don’t need all three of you.”
Boreck offered the world one final scream, one shout of “Run!” before he was murdered, his body falling like a sack of bones. Hurorsh watched, horrified, as Arrav stepped over the body of his friend and charged Dreya.
Zemouregal held the child in his arms. The young man had held out longer than he’d expected, endured several minutes of torture, in fact, pleading for terms and conditions, begging for Misthalin’s safety assured. Toward the end, he had only begged for the end of pain, for death. The child in Zemouregal’s arms curled there, moving and shifting softly against his skin, through his shirt.
He almost didn’t care about how tiny she was. Almost didn’t care about how… how human she looked. Saradomin had, somehow, miraculously, given life to a dead Mahjarrat, a creature that should have had no soul to be revived in the first place. It had been a miracle only he could have achieved, and Saradomin had used his possession of Zemouregal’s child as leverage for far too long.
“What do you say?” he asked back at Arrav. The thrall was standing firm, solid, like a man made of brick, turning his head slowly to take in the faces of each of the three priests. “Should I raise these as well, give you your friends back? They’re completely dead, so they wouldn’t have their minds, not like you. I’m feeling in a good mood, though.” It was true; he felt warm for the first time in thousands of years, holding the small life close to him.
Arrav shuddered, if a corpse could be said to do such a thing. “Let them have peace,” he pled, and Zemouregal smiled thinly. Arrav was the reason his conquering of Misthalin had failed, yet because of that, his child had been returned by stupid, frightened humans.
“As you like it,” Zemouregal agreed, “Now come. I must prepare a room for her, must… figure out how to raise a thing like this.”
And despite his loss, his triumph, uncertainty hit him. He was no nursemaid, had no idea how to feed or tend to a baby. Perhaps he should have kept that man alive longer, turned him into a being like Arrav, with mind enough to know how to obey complex orders. Ah, well. Undead or alive, he’d find someone to ensure that the girl survived infancy.
Vhael likely would have protested at the comparison, but despite how human the baby looked, the girl resembled her mother.
A cold panic welled up in his chest, and he turned his face away from the child, breathing hard. The child twisted, starting to mewl pathetically, and he thrust it at Arrav, eyes unfocused, mind distant. He righted himself quickly. Arrav accepted the child, and his glossy, yellowed eyes shot up at Zemouregal with sudden interest at his lapse. "Come. Let's return."
The girl's mother had been nobody.