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The first time it happens, Sylvanas responds with violence.
She’d been coming off night watch, going to roust some of the women for morning drills, but the moment she stepped down from the trees—why stand watch from the walls when the trees suit her better, when it gives her the space and quiet to relax even marginally—something rushed out of the river and wrapped itself around her head.
Sylvanas has a knife in it before she finishes processing, moving without hesitation. Something else hits her around the gut, trying to control her arms. She twists and stabs that too, but the knife sinks in without resistance—water, wet, they’re water elementals and they’re trying to fucking pin her down—
Later she’ll assess why it’s trying to suffocate her. Right now she sheds her body, abandons it like a carcass, leaves the water elementals to fall to the ground with it—is it too much to think they look pleased? Doesn’t matter because incorporeal they’re on equal ground, she can strike with one arm, smoke and death, and cut the lower elemental in two.
The elemental hisses and combines itself again—smaller now, the effort having taken something from it—rising from the dirt like a tidal wave—
That stops her, that visual, the horror that chains her to the ground, makes her crumple into a hunched monster, baring her teeth and snarling at the elementals, a trapped cur beaten one too many times.
Did Jaina send them?
There are ways to kill water elementals; she can expend some of herself and force them back to their home plane. But she’s consumed by the thought now, even as she rushes forward to drive the elementals off her body—she won’t surrender it again—lashes out at them, tearing strips of water away, leaving dark gashes behind in their outlines, making them shriek at her—
“What is happening?” Jaina says. She hasn’t been up long, still with her hair down around her shoulders, a blanket thrown over the tunic that she sleeps in.
The water elementals spring back, abandoning Sylvanas’s body to huddle at Jaina’s feet. They’re babbling something, but not in any language Sylvanas speaks. Not that it matters; obviously Jaina will listen to their side.
Sylvanas doesn’t bother possessing her body. She may as well remind Jaina what exactly she is: An abomination, a monster even by monster standards, something that has to possess its own body in order to pass among the living.
After a moment, though, Jaina says furiously, “I told you—” Eyes glowing, she looks down where Sylvanas is. “Sylvanas, did they hurt you?”
The question doesn’t make sense. There is nothing to hurt, just an abomination that still clings to its own corpse. Her form, her smoke settles over the body, but she resists the urge to sink into it. Whatever this is, she will be safer if she is incorporeal.
“Sylvanas...” Jaina turns and snaps something—in Kalimag, which of course she speaks, as if this whole situation were not humiliating enough, now Jaina won’t even talk in a language Sylvanas understands—and the water elementals melt away. “I’ll have words with them, they won’t do that again. Did they hurt you? How even would you—” She makes a vague hand gesture.
In no way is Sylvanas going to reveal how she fuels herself. With the water elementals gone, though, she may as well finish this conversation standing upright. She returns to her body, letting the smoke soak into the skin beneath, allowing herself to be bound once more by the movements of flesh and bone.
Her eyes open again. The first thing she sees through her physical eyes is Jaina flinching away. Of course. Standing up is rough, her muscles not responding fluidly. Usually she discorporeates entirely, taking the body with her; this time she left it behind to occupy the water elementals, and rejoining with it always takes time.
“I am uninjured,” she says, voice rough and echoing.
Jaina looks her over and finally says, “Right. I am sorry for that. It won’t happen again.”
It’s not the first time Jaina has apologized to her. It never stops being surprising, something lurching in her chest. She can’t say anything, just brushes past Jaina and tries to find her equilibrium again.
The second time is less of a surprise and more of an annoyance.
Sylvanas is on her way to meet with Jaina anyway when a water elemental throws itself on her—where are they hiding, she keeps an eye out but can’t seem to spot them—and immediately fills her mouth and throat.
Either this one is smaller than the last or it’s compressing itself, because while it forms a film over her head and face, it doesn’t extend beyond that, turning the world a murky blue and blunting most noise.
The first time hadn’t been a betrayal—or if it had been, Jaina had reversed course remarkably fast upon seeing its failure. It seems more likely that the water elementals are, as per their reputation, capricious sprites who must be wrestled into obedience.
This one isn’t even attempting to restrain her, so she carries on, finding Jaina fortuitously alone working on storeroom records. Jaina’s absorbed enough in it that she doesn’t twitch until Sylvanas has a hand on her shoulder—and then it’s not a twitch but a flinch. It might be a reflexive response to anyone sneaking up on her, but there’s a water elemental trying to force its way into Sylvanas’s lungs, for whatever good that will do, and she’s not inclined to give the benefit of the doubt right now.
She doesn’t need to say anything, just use the hand on Jaina’s shoulder to turn her, press her up against the wall.
Jaina blurts, “Foam. Get out.”
The elemental pulls itself back out of her mouth, splashing on the ground. It looks up at Jaina with the vague depressions that serve for eyes, but must not see what it wants, because it flows out of the storeroom.
Sylvanas moves her hand to Jaina’s throat—and then, partially incorporeal, into her throat, an explicit threat, returning to Jaina what was done to her. “Explain.”
It takes Jaina a moment to start talking. First she raises a hand, almost touching Sylvanas; then she pulls it away, as if afraid of what touching would do. Her jaw works, but Sylvanas is being careful—there is no harm or restraint on Jaina. Yet. “They’re tricksters,” Jaina says finally. “They think they’re helping, but they’re not good at it.”
“Why,” Sylvanas says, quiet, a threat in every line of her body, her claws in Jaina’s throat, pushed through her windpipe, daring her to give the wrong answer, “why would they think they’re helping?”
Jaina stares at her, pale—and then determined, one hand twists and there’s an arcane barrier sliding into place between them, shoving Sylvanas back an unwilling step. Her hand is forced out of Jaina’s throat. A dangerous but clever move. “For Tide’s sake, Sylvanas, why would I want you dead?”
Sylvanas will spend lonely nights turning over the intonation of those words, extracting every possible meaning. In the moment, she says, “I should think it obvious.”
“I have been clear with them, although apparently not clear enough, that we are allies now.” Jaina is blazing, mana crackling off her skin, but all she does is hold the barrier. Nothing aggressive. “They think they’re helping because we’ve been mortal enemies.” It’s said with the sort of tone that implies you idiot.
She can’t threaten Jaina anymore, but the pounding rage demands an exit. Sylvanas crosses her arms, knows where it draws Jaina’s gaze, and says, “How many of your mortal enemies have been drowned, then?”
For a pleasing moment, Jaina looks like she might respond in kind. Then she sighs and pulls down the barrier. “They can’t drown you, so stop acting like you were under threat. I’ll have a word with them, again, for whatever good that will do.”
Sylvanas leans forward, shoulders raised—bristling like an angry cat, which matches how she feels. “Then control them, Proudmoore.”
“You may wish to slap chains onto your friends—” Jaina bursts out, face flushed. “That’s not how I treat them, which you’ll just have to accept.”
This time it’s Jaina who leaves first.
The third time Sylvanas discorporates entirely and leaves the water elemental flummoxed on the ground. The fourth time one tries to interfere while she’s training a squad, so she ignores it completely as it soaks her to the skin, and watches the women stare at her in admiration.
The fifth time a group of elementals swarm her while she’s walking along the docks and pull her into the river.
There’s enough of them to hold her down unless she abandons corporeal form again, and under the water her Wail will be blunted. And, traitorously, she thinks that Jaina wouldn’t approve of her killing the damned things.
So they pull her down to the bottom of the river, shove her against a rock and—giggle?
Sylvanas has spent days now obsessing about the harassment, and how convincing Jaina is when she denies her part in it. It is harassment, not an incompetent assassination attempt, after five rounds of this she is willing to grant Jaina that much. But at the same time, how can an archmage be so pathetically unable to stop a pack of minor elementals?
They’re giggling though, and have—somehow she intuits this, despite the lack of most facial features or indeed faces—the sense of getting away with something their parents would disapprove of. It’s like being kidnapped by a pack of children.
She should be angry. It’s happened almost every day since Jaina first summoned the elementals. It’s humiliating. It’s obnoxious. She’s the Warchief of the Horde, a nightmare to her opponents, individually a threat to be reckoned with, and she is now being held hostage by a handful of petty bullies.
Instead of anger she finds...something she’s not willing to name. She snaps her teeth at the elementals, trailing air bubbles.
Some of them move away, but they come right back, laughing.
She remains still, perfectly motionless, until the group creep close to her, their outlines distinct against the darker blue of the river. When they’re all up against her, she yells, not a Wail but something close to it, packed with all the force she can muster.
The water elementals scatter, screeching, and Sylvanas pushes off from the gravel, swimming for the surface.
Her head breaks free and she treads water briefly. The river is strong enough she’ll be swept downstream if she tries to swim to shore. She can always fly, and she may yet resort to that, but...As long as she’s here, soaking wet and excruciatingly aware of how heavy her armor is, she may as well make use of it.
“I know you’re there,” she says in Common. “Come up here and talk with me.”
There’s a long moment where she thinks she’s talking to herself, before a patch of water forms a head. “Warchief.”
“Elemental.”
Another pause, and the elemental caves first. “You speak. We listen.”
Sylvanas doubts this, but she may as well try. “Why do you persist in trying to drown me?”
The elemental manages to look appalled. “Not drown! Not drown Warchief, sea-sister says. Not try to drown. No drown, agreed. Agreed to not drown.”
This is going to take longer than she’d thought. She had expected that the water elemental would admit to it; she knows they’re poor liars, so it seems that whatever is happening here, five attacks in as many days, is something else.
Once again her lack of breath is an asset, because she can tread water vigorously and keep her tone perfectly level. “What are you doing, then?”
“Get Warchief wet,” the elemental says, and vanishes.
The ambushes don’t let up after that, but with the context her responses are marginally less violent. The water elementals aren’t fruitlessly trying to drown her, although she hasn’t been able to corner one again to ask what they are trying to accomplish. Instead they swamp her with water and then disappear into it, not lingering to taunt her. When she sees them with Jaina—this is a frequent occurrence, it seems Jaina had missed the damn things—they’re on their best behavior.
Sylvanas isn’t about to bring it up with Jaina again like a child complaining of being poked. She’ll handle this herself.
She’d spent a day indulging her annoyance that every one of her outfits was soaking wet—and without involving Jaina, unlikely to dry quickly. That irritation quickly faded when she realized she could wear the Gorean short tunic instead. Just the tunic. It’s not like she gets cold.
The effect on Jaina the first time was unforgettable. Certainly one of her favorite memories of her undeath.
But fine. If the water elementals want to torment her, she is happy to play along. The next time she sees one coming, she discorporates, just slightly, just enough that the water passes through her without effect.
The water elemental stops and makes a disgusted noise.
It’s a little harder to reform herself—she wasn’t meant to do so at speed, and the process can be uncomfortable—but when she’s done, she bares her teeth at the elemental. “Try harder,” she says, and leaves.
It doesn’t follow.
What it does do is sneak into her quarters—such as they are, a corner of the barracks she’s claimed to leave her belongings in—and form a wet and slippery patch.
“Juvenile,” she says, stepping over it.
It leaps up at her but she pivots smoothly. If she tries, she can think of this as a training exercise. The better she is at avoiding water elemental traps, the better she’ll be able to avoid weapons on the battlefield.
It’s not because she enjoys this. The water elementals are nuisances that Jaina should keep on a shorter leash. She would be happier if the damn things remained in the river and didn’t bother her.
The next day she goes to string her bow and the string is wet. So is her backup string. She cuts a new one to size from stores.
An elemental tries to ambush her on the way out of the storage room, so she puts a black arrow in it—experimentally, more than anything else.
The necromantic energy leaves black tracks through the elemental’s being. It squeals and wiggles back. “No shoot!” it says, expression distressed. It collapses into a puddle and reforms, leaving the arrow on the ground. “Why shoot? No shoot Spray!”
Sylvanas isn’t used to water elementals having names. “Why get wet?” she snaps back, echoing their dialect accidentally.
“Fun,” Spray says with enthusiasm. “Fun fun! Jaina said.”
She is reasonably sure Jaina did not say anything about getting her wet being fun—or for that matter, allowed. Under no circumstances, however, is she about to go whining to Proudmoore that the water elementals are being nuisances.
She goes to the range to practice, stubbornly ignoring Spray flicking droplets at her ears.
The next time Sylvanas just stabs it. The elemental—it might be Spray, it might be a different one—is trying to tangle her ankles while she’s doing evening patrol, and she reacts without thinking.
The elemental looks faintly horrified—somehow, with a pair of divots for eyes and a shallow scoop of a mouth—and squelches away from the knife. “Mean,” it says, melting into the dirt.
Sylvanas thinks about stabbing it again for good measure, but it is so visibly pathetic that she refrains. Instead she turns away, keeping one ear tipped back.
Again it doesn’t follow. The elementals have all stopped the moment she’s caught them, and usually there’s at least a few hours between one attempt and the next. It’s almost polite, in an odd way. They’re trying to sneak up on her, trying to inconvenience her—but there’s a level of malevolence lacking from their actions.
She sets that thought aside for future consideration and finishes her rounds.
The elementals get a little more creative after that. She changes boots to find that the new ones are soaking wet on the inside, and just because she can’t get foot-rot any longer doesn’t mean that she doesn’t shudder putting the boots on. Her spare leathers are drenched, gloves are wet, there’s the constant drip of water in the background, and she’s constantly avoiding patches of ice that melt before anyone else sees.
She treats it as a training exercise. Instincts and old habits aside, it doesn’t matter to her if her clothing is wet. If one foot slips, her balance is exceptional and no one notices.
The water in her scabbards is irritating, true, and very nearly makes her go to Jaina. But Sylvanas isn’t going to be the first to surrender this strange, obnoxious contest they’re having.
What does end it is the gurgling that starts any time she’s speaking to someone. She can’t find the water elemental responsible, but the sound of water cascading over rocks is both distinctive and inexplicable. Sylvanas mostly just talks louder and ignores any attempt by the women to call her attention to it.
Jaina, on the other hand, notices immediately. “Sorry—wait a second,” she says the moment Sylvanas meets her. They do a short debrief in the evenings now to make sure both of them are on the same page.
Sylvanas’s eyebrows pull up. There’s water dripping down the back of her hood that she’s stubbornly ignoring, and if she shifts her weight—which she doesn’t, benefits of being undead—her boots will audibly squelch.
“Bubbles,” Jaina snarls, and immediately the background noise stops.
The water elemental that condenses out of thin air is visibly abashed. Somehow.
Jaina rubs the bridge of her nose and looks at Sylvanas. “Do you—no. Surely...Sylvanas, how long have they been—?”
If Jaina wants an answer so badly, she can ask a coherent question. Sylvanas stares at the back wall and thinks about campaigning in a desert.
“Are you both twelve?” Jaina directs this at the general air.
Sylvanas’s eyebrows inch higher. “Years?” she says, “or centuries?” She’s not that old, but Bubbles might be. No one really understands how elementals age.
Jaina has to take a deep breath, which Sylvanas fights to not find deeply satisfying. It’s been a long and very wet week; at the least, Jaina can be moderately inconvenienced. “How long has this been going on?”
“The background noise?” She knows Jaina is asking about the whole process of harassment, but it’s more fun this way.
Predictably Jaina grinds her teeth. “Bubbles,” she says next, in a low tone. “How long?”
Bubbles shifts in a way that suggests avoidance. “Sea-sister wanted Warchief gone.”
Sylvanas twitches, leans forward, suppresses the rage. Jaina wanted this?
“Bubbles...” Jaina puts her hands on her hips. “No. Not for months, and I told you.”
“Proudmoore.” Sylvanas is resisting the urge to pull the truth out of Jaina’s mouth by force, as impossible as that is. “How much of this is by your orders?”
Jaina throws her hands up in the air. “None of it! They are impossible little devils, and I could chain them down, force them into what I want, but Tides, Sylvanas, I thought you of all people would understand why I won’t do that.”
Sylvanas is pretty sure she’s being compared to a water elemental. “You are saying you have no options other than allowing your servants to harass me except slavery?”
“I am saying,” Jaina says, through clenched teeth, “that I told them to stop harassing you. Apparently they willfully misunderstood, which I will absolutely be speaking with them about. In the meantime, kindly forebear from assuming hostility from me!”
Sylvanas shows her teeth in response—a petty, juvenile behavior but satisfying to do when her opponent is a human. “Are we no longer enemies, then? Should we return to Azeroth—”
Jaina steps towards her, jabbing a finger at her chest. “Then the water elementals will be the least of your worries. Right now, I am doing my best to respect your enormous personal space. Bubbles—leave the Warchief alone. Please stop trying to get around this.”
Bubbles visibly deflates, widening into a flat puddle. “Yes, Jaina.”
“Is that acceptable to you?” Jaina snaps.
Sylvanas says, “Yes,” and probably means it. There’s something churning within her chest—metaphorically, a feeling that she should not be having because her body is dead, her soul is dead, and yet here she is, being chastised by Jaina Proudmoore.
“Great,” Jaina says. “Good. We won’t need to talk about this again.”
The water elementals don’t do anything the next day, or the next. Sylvanas doesn’t miss it.