Part 24

The group meandered towards Crystalsong Forest, uninterrupted by desperate pleas to kill despotic interlopers. It was a slow journey, really, taking slightly more than two weeks.

It seemed, in fact, almost anti-climactic, when they at last stood at the portal up to Dalaran. The others waited to see what would happen to Nerissa when she activated the tinkered device that was supposed to mechanically teleport her up to Dalaran. She vanished as she trepidatiously turned the switch.

One by one, they touched the crystal. Each arrived with great relief to see her smiling face.

All but Ferruk, who realized that this might be her freedom—or it might become her trap. Here, the portals were not teleport pads, but mage portals. If they could not get assistance in ending the curse, she would be trapped here until the end of her days.

He tried to keep his worry to himself, but she noticed it and asked. He shook his head, "Let's confront one concern at a time," he told her. She nodded and followed as the others headed towards the Legerdemain. There, they got rooms, and then sat down to eat and consider what the next move was.

"I think Rhonin will help us," Whitecrow said.

Malovici, watching them eat and trying to keep from sewing parts on (the innkeeper had scowled at him when he'd started to do so earlier), agreed with him. "Rhonin's sure to help, if for no other reason than that it's a mystery and a magic he's not seen before," was his comment as he fought the urge to fidget.

So it was decided, and they went to see Rhonin. As they entered the room, he looked up and, to their surprise, greeted them all by name, even guessing whom Nerissa was. His fiery hair seemed to dominate the room, a strange characteristic of the man that drew the eyes of everyone but Malovici and Ferruk.

They noticed more the aura of almost absurd Power that exuded from him. Ferruk realized that his senses were becoming more and more magically acute as time passed, and was both a bit pleased, and a bit unnerved by this fact.

He shook his head and returned to the issue at hand. Shaking Rhonin's hand, he told him, "We're here to request your help, or for you to send us to someone who will help us."

"Well, what's going on? We'll see what we can do," came his response.

Nerissa explained the situation, trying to keep it succinct and on point. At last, he nodded quietly. "Let's take a look, shall we?"

He began to inspect Nerissa with his magical vision, an ability that everyone had. It was the simplest of inspections, and it rankled Ferruk slightly. Especially when Rhonin began to laugh.

"Have any of you, and I mean, even you, Nerissa, actually inspected this curse?" he asked when he could control himself again.

"No," Nerissa said rather heatedly. "We don't need to, we know what it does!"

"But do you know its duration?" he asked her.

"My mother told me as a child, it's permanent until it's removed," she said, still defensive and even starting to show indications of agitated anger.

The group, almost as one, turned to inspect the curse.

And one by one, they reacted first with shock, then incredulity, and then finally ironic laughter. Anyone with any appreciation for the absurd, the ludicrous, or the plain insensible could do nothing other than laugh.

It wasn't permanent at all, and in fact expired in two days' time.

"All that, for nothing," Nerissa breathed, the only one not laughing.

"Not for nothing, at all," Rhonin told her, his voice now sympathetic and understanding. "You've gained friends, even gotten married. You were where you needed to be to free the Howling Fjord of Prince Keleseth and his minions.

"No, I'd not say it was all for nothing," he concluded. "Not at all."

She smiled at him, still a bit wan and unsure. "You're right," she said, though. And indeed, he was.

In stunned silence, they traipsed back to the Legerdemain. No one said anything, no one knowing what to say. Finally, they went about their business for the next couple of days. They parted at the Legerdemain, with the agreement to meet up there in two days.

Ferruk and Nerissa stayed there, learning more about each other, and making love repeatedly. They often ordered in, simply going right back to making love as soon as the food had come and been eagerly, impatiently consumed.

When the time came, they rejoined the others, and went on their way. Nerissa was free; free to protect the man she loved. And he was free to protect the woman he loved.

Diligence, after all, is its own reward.

Finally, it was time. The birthing room was quiet, and not at all what one would expect for such an auspicious event. Indeed, it was cold, the air damp and smelling heavily of fungus, mildew, and decay.

The light was low, the atmosphere somber. The only person attending the delivery of this new life was a strange, rotting creature whose visage was silent and stony.

Damp rivulets of green inched down the walls of the delivery room, and the belly of the bestial box bulged and groaned as the life within it slowly began to emerge.

Chalisse climbed from the box, confused and unsure. "What?" she asked, her sepulchral voice grinding against rotted vocal cords that had forgotten how to speak in the few short weeks of death.

"Chalisse," Valorin said silkily. "When a new Forsaken rises, they have no memory of anything except what they are reminded of.

"Long ago, you killed a young man who loved you, and left him for dead, far from home."

"Valorin," Chalisse creaked, and then laughed, the hinges of her lungs protesting the action. "He was weak and easily manipulated," she told the miserable, pathetic creature before her.

"That may well be so. But you also tried to kill your daughter, and failed," he told her. He watched silently as memories flooded her. She snarled.

"I will get my fortune back!" she shouted.

He laughed, "No, Chalisse, you won't. For you are dead, and can never reclaim it."

"What?" she said, even her rotted, cadaverous face registering concerned shock.

"But there's something else you must remember while there's still time," he told her. "Remember how it feels to be beautiful?

"Remember how the men lusted after you? Remember how it felt to know that you were always perfect?"

She grinned, throwing her shoulders back somewhat, "Oh yes," she breathed, "men worship me, they will do anything for me."

"Yes," Valorin said, walking around her now, "remember, Chalisse. Remember the power inherent in your beauty. Remember how perfect you were. Remember what it felt like to be so physically perfect."

"I remember," she said, slyly.

"Excellent," he told her. "Come, see how beautiful you are now." He led her to a mirror that he'd hung from the wall, the only adornment on the walls at all. It had somehow managed to escape the corrosive ichor, and now waited to tell Chalisse the story of her current condition.

He pulled her, rather forcibly, into its view. She stared, transfixed, at the horror that greeted her. Its lower jaw was barely attached, hanging on one side by a mere string. It was gaunt, with ragged bits of rotting flesh hanging from it. Clumps of clotted, unpleasant hair stuck up from its rotting skull like worms trying to flee.

Its golden eyes stared unblinkingly at her.

"What trickery is this?" she said agitatedly, refusing to accept the evidence of her own eyes.

"You killed me, and left me for dead, Chalisse," Valorin whispered in the spot where an ear once surely was. "And now, now I give you life."

She looked in the mirror again, and raised her hand to her cheek. Then, she shrieked.

Her shriek screamed out through the Undercity, echoing up the halls and through the cavernous depths. The abominable guards paused for a moment, cocking their heads to listen, before shrugging and going back to their duties. The shriek echoed further into the heart of Undercity, though, until even Jeremiah Payson the cockroach vendor tilted his head to hear.

And Valorin laughed. The laughter started out slowly, but then rolled out across the Undercity, pursuing the shriek of the woman before him, and those who heard it shuddered. Jeremiah even cuddled a roach closer, covering it protectively with a bony hand as he trembled in the face of the righteous fury in that cutting laugh.

"Hear me well, Chalisse," Valorin told her. "There's a special gift in becoming Forsaken. No matter how much you hate life, you will want to live anyway. You will fight to protect this undead existence no matter the cost." He laughed again. "And no matter the horror you feel every single time that you look into that mirror.

"A horror that everyone else will feel when they look upon you, you murderous bitch." Then he left her there to stare in terror at the crypt fiend that stared back at her from the mirror.

Then she scowled, the patch of brow that remained curling up into a wrinkled gray mass. "I'll get you, Valorin. You and Nerissa. I'll get you both, if I die trying. I'll get you!"

Miles away, Nerissa felt a coldness pass over her, as if someone had walked across her grave. She dismissed it as her imagination, and caught up to Ferruk again.

"So where are we off to now?" she asked.

"I thought we'd go help clear Naxxramas out again," he told her.

They did, as well as going on many other adventures.

They did see Chalisse again, but that's another story, for another time…